July 18, 2006

BSG - Act I

I've been writing a Shakespearean Battlestar Galactica spoof, for something to do, and need a place to post the first parts. Act I and II set up the action, and I'm still working on III and IV.

The Cloud Nine Reloadeth

Act I

PROLOGUE

Enter Chorus

Chorus
O for visual effects that would
Display the twirling motions of combat,
A starfield for a stage, Vipers to fly,
And Cylon Raiders to complete the tight
And fiery scene! Then warlike Starbuck would
Ascend her cockpit, launch, and on her tail
Pursuing Raiders jockey for the kill
Till she spins round, her cannons' breathing death.
But lacking technical ability,
And pardon us for that, the poor props
For our display will show thee only chairs.
'Tis an unworthy format to bring forth
So great an object: can this limited
Hall hold the empty void of space? or may
We cram within this wooden Globe the ships
That did bring light to darkness round the fleet?
O, pardon! since a thousand words may not
Convey the merest moment of a vid,
You must envision with your mind at home
Events described by spoken words alone.

Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies
In motion of no less celerity
Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen
The well regarded leader there
At Ragnar Anchorage embark his post,
On hands and features Cylon blood afresh;
And meeting there his brave new fleet of ships
Whose presence the nebula doth there enfold.
Play with thy fancies, and in them behold
Inside the packed civs passengers a-swarm
Across the seats to find a view afresh
Of gaseous tendrils, glowing solar storms.
Hear, shrill intercom doth order give
To sounds confused; behold the mammoth ships,
Propelled against the brush of streaming winds.
Huge hulking hulls amid furrow'd crevasse
Now breasting out the mouth: O, do but think
You stare upon the vantage and behold
Our vast armada in the inconstant
Tendrils dancing; sailing under threat
From Base Stars and the Cylon Raiders launched.
For so appears this fleet majestical,
On course from Ragnar, then the jump away.
For dread reflexive foe doth then pursue,
Jump for jump, implacable in aim,
And so the pair of foes make on their way,
One running 'fore, and one locked in the wake.
When prey is lost, hard Cylons fail the day,
Will fate or chance or luck then cross new path
Galactica's gosslings here and again.

Follow, follow: Seize your minds around
The leadership of this ill fated force
And leave the Colonies, now still and dead,
Bombarded from orbit, babes and women,
Have not survived to see this ragged fleet.
For who is he whose heart is not enrich'd
By this shocked band of refugees from death.
Who is he that will not each sennight trail,
These cull'd and fate-drawn wagoneers to Earth?
Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;
Behold the ordnance on ships underslung,
With fatal seekers set to lock the herds
Of hopeful humans trying but to live.
They rendezvoused with warship Pegasus
And with her help struck hard blows 'gainst Cylons,
But murdered was her harsh commander Caine,
Done in by Cylon treachery and plot.
Caine's hard XO condemned by greed to die
By crime lord's hand, and his replacement, too,
Did meet an early death. Three up, three down,
And now Adama's own son doth command
A battlestar in their formation, bound
Forever hence to sail the comet swept
Expanse of space, yet still so far from Earth.

Suppose Cylons from the void appear;
Lay siege to Cloud Nine and take it hostage.
Tells them Adama their god-head bid him
Safety from their onslaught, if he but yield,
Give up to them a ship of daughters fair;
Some pretty, fecund, hand picked youthful ones.
The offer likes not: and brave Adama
With hard lock now his devilish cannon aims.

Alarum, and chambers go off

And up float all before him. Still be kind,
And eke out our performance with your mind.

Exit

SCENE I. Pilots' Ready Room on Pegasus.

Alarum. Enter Commander LEE "APOLLO" ADAMA

Apollo.
Once more to pursuit, dread Vipers, once more;
Smother their attack with our cannon's lead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a pilot
As studied caution and efficiency:
But when the wings a-war shriek at our fleet,
Then imitate the action of the falcon;
Congeal the grip, pump up the blood,
Abandon smooth inputs for hard-bank'd rage;
Then trim thine eye to a razor bead and
Let fly thy cannons' steely lead
Like the hard pounding of our defense guns;
Let the deadly shells tear through them easily
As a hunter's blast rips through the muscles
Of a rocketing pheasant, sending blood
And feathers sprayed, the bird somersaulting
Lifeless through the air to blood the ground,
Still'd by lethal shot loosed upon his fate.
Now set the jaw and flare the nostrils wide,
Hold hard the breath and tauten sinew's grip
To keep your hot blood pumped into the head.
On, on, you noblest of Colonials.
With lethal skills learned at your fathers' hands!
Fathers that, like so many pilots who
Have from this ship from morn till evening fought
And recovered all their fighters aboard
For lack of surviving opposition:
Dishonor them not, nor the crew you serve,
Those who toil to keep you perched in cockpit.
Be copies now to men of older blood,
Master their lessons and their famous deeds,
And by your brilliant example rewrite
The very primer on the art of war.
So good pilots, you rough Colonials,
Show us now the metal of your arms;
And prove anon the worth of cruelest guides,
Which I doubt not; as you have lived thus far,
For there is none of you so young and green,
That hath not lethal combat in your eyes.
I see you stand like Vipers in the slips,
Straining at the start. Raiders are a-wing:
Unleash your spirit, and against this wave
Cry 'Freedom! Death to the flying toasters!'

Exit. Alarums.

SCENE II. The Space near the Fleet

Enter Captain Taylor, KNUCKLES, SCREWBALL, and HOTDOG.

Taylor.
On, on, on, on, on! Take out the leader,
Take out the leader!Knuckles.
Prithee, captain, lag back: the incoming is too hot;
And, for mine own part, I have not a case of lives:
Nor a stable of trim ships. The taste of it is too hot,
That is the very plain-song of it.Screwball.
The plain-song is best heeded: for Raiders
Do swarm as thick as bees around a hive.
Shots go and come; while the Galactica's
Pilots burn and die;
Yet a hot stick with cannons,
In these fiery skies,
Doth bring immortal fame.Hotdog.
Would I were home in Caprica City!
I would give all my fame and rank for a
Mug of ambrosia and trifling boredom.Screwball
And I:
If wishes would prevail with me,
This intercept should not fail with me,
But from this hairball would I shy.Hotdog.
Duly noted, but truly spoke,
Like a record that is broke.

Enter CAPTAIN KARA "STARBUCK" THRACE

Starbuck.
Intercept the Cylon squadrons, you dogs!
Throttle up, you laggards!Screwball
Be merciful, captain, to pilots of
Old as opposed to bold, who would not mind
Much growing old. Abate thy zealous rage.
Abate thy rage, good Captain! Good ballcock,
Bate thy rage; use lenience, sweet Buck!Knuckles.
This be her good humor! Retard your idle
Throttle yet further to win her bad humor.Petty Officer Dualla. (Dee) (filtered)
All fighters, return to Galactica.
Fleet, prepare to jump.Screwball
Order acknowledged, and it we're heeding,
Toward homeward regretfully heading.
'Nother hour well spent, 'nother victory
Chalked up to heroics and mastery,
'Tis no mystery. We're simply the best.Dee. (filtered)
Cut the chatter. Your talk is thick as flak.Screwball
Roger that, returning home, our throttles
Still stay'd hard gainst the firewall.

Exeunt all but Hotdog.

Hotdog.
As green as I am, I have observed these
Two nefarious strip-club wing flashers.
I am junior to them both: but though they
Would teach me, ne'er could be mentor to me;
Indeed, A wing of such clowns could not sum
To one whole warrior. As for Screwball,
He talks a good fight and never lands short,
Nor short on ammo; by the means whereof
He boasts today, avoids all risks, and so doth
He always see to boast another day.
For Knuckles, He be lily-livered and
Red-faced; by the means whereof
He dishes it out, but he fights not fair,
His bad words are matched with as few good deeds;
For he'd risk any man's head but his own,
Lest was against the deck when he was drunk.
They will steal anything and declare it
Extra-procedural requisition.
Screwball ventured into the civy fleet,
Barked about our ship's priority needs,
Seized him thus up a nice video rig,
Flew it back in secret to Pegasus,
And sold it to late Commander Fisk for
Two-hundred fifty-five cubits profit.
My two friends are sworn partners in filching.
On Cloud Nine they stole a bar's mini-fridge:
I knew with that hot piece in service the
Thirsty pilots would all chill their cold ales.
The two would have me as familiar with
Ship's dockets as their palms or footlockers:
Which eats much into my pride in uniform.
If I should take from another's hock to
Put into mine own; all I'll have to mark
My life is a stocking a-stuffed with wrongs.
I must leave and seek some better service:
Their villainy makes me ache as were hit.
A bellyful a-butterflies upsets
My stomach, to wrestle down or vomit,
And therefore I must break clean away or
Swallow it down, day on pilfering day.

Asha.
Dost thou be certain this bold course were best?Royan.
This strife prolongs our weary flight, a course
Of bitter tragedy accompanied
By dawdling deprivation, capped off by
Despotic misgovernance, till by fate
We meet our end, slowly starved to skin and bones
Or frittered off in battles without win;
And sitting idle by, doing nothing,
Makes tacit our approval of it. Nay,
To acquiesce in playing merest role
In war and genocide is to condone
The conflict, further it, enable it,
And thus a just and lasting peace postpone.Asha.
Thou promised thou'd disdain all further bombs
And sabotage. What of thine honored word?Royan.
Duress, my girl! The promise was coerced
With threats of pained disappearance "unless,"
So I do disavow its hold o'er me.Asha.
Adama will react with harshest means
He can conceive, as tyrants often do,
Against the coming liberation of
This fleet from Laura Roslin's warrior band.Royan.
Let him do his worst. Retributions will
Compel the masses to abjure their faith
In Roslin's visions and Adama's Earth,
Renounce their unelected leaders' lies
And this now pointless war, to join with us
In seeking peace by turning fleet towards home.

Exeunt Royan and Asha.

Open a hidden partition to reveal an eavesdropping Sergeant Hadrian,
and a Colonial Marine corporal, with listening equipment before them.

Corporal.
Hippies! Damned sandal-wearing hippies!
Impale the sorry lot! Yes, ass-pike them
Till brown patchoulli oil and pot-laced blood
Doth stain the shaft from tip unto the ground.Sgt. Hadrian.
Hi ho, a month of spying earns a hash
Today! We have a plot discovered here
Or call me not a sleuth of vigilance
Renowned. Adama will his pride digest
On finding my inquiry hath a nest
Of Cylon simps uncovered. Note the day!Corporal.
Our homes destroyed and people slaughtered,
Yet who'd believe that there are treasonous
Accomplices to Cylon genocide,
And eager ones at that, or that there were
Such scum as would betray our race and chose
To side with cold machines o'er kith and kin?Sgt. Hadrian.
'Tis fear that drives them, fear and absolute
Conviction we ourselves deserve the worst
That fate can meter out, .Corporal.
O, that these pustules breathe is bad enough.
Discontented 'tards who'd make league with ticks
To suck our blood; foul nature's toking twerps,
Self-hatred's tools, foul bedlam's shrieking tongues.Sgt. Hadrian.
Misguided madness doth contend with spoilt
In making up their angry nature, yet
That which hath made them dumb doth make them bold;
We go to file reports. Come

Exeunt

SCENE IV. Galactica's Port Hangar Bay

Enter Starbuck and LIEUTENANT KARL "HELO" AGATHON, following.

Helo.
Captain Thrace, you must get thee to the port
Hangar, Commander Adama would there
Discourse unto you about a mission
In a Raptor.Starbuck.
In a Raptor! tell you the Commander
It is not good to fly in a Raptor;
For, look you, the bird, though it be big, is
Not accomodating to a fighter
Pilot's ego: the atmosphere of it
Is too airy; and our adversaries
Rate it a most fat and jolly target.
You may this discuss unto the Major
I prefer Vipers, though given his rank
Swelled head I understand why Raptors he
Now prefers.Helo.
Cylons have somehow appeared in Cloud Nine,
And even now be there, lurking in wait;
For what we know not why.Starbuck.
How many, doth tell me! How did prick they
Through our defense, our patrols and DRADIS?Helo.
I know not that either, but by rumour
They flew two Raptors of their very own.
Colonel Tigh, from whose authority this
Critical raid is ordered, has assigned
It to the Pegasus' old CAG, call sign
"Stinger", a quite valiant pilot, I'm told.Starbuck.
It is Captain Taylor, is it not?Helo.
I think it be.Starbuck.
By Hera, he is the ass of the world:
I will say fully as much to his glass;
He has no more directions in the true
Disciplines of the wars, look you, of the
Pican disciplines, than a puppy-dog.
All bluster and balls and attacks without
First thought.

Enter CAPTAIN COLE "STINGER" TAYLOR and
Commander Lee Apollo Adama

Helo.
Here now a' comes the Pegasus' captain,
And Commander Apollo with him.Starbuck.
Commander Apollo is a marv'lous
And valorous gentleman, is certain;
And wouldst know best how to assault the Nine
Upon my particular knowledge of
His inclinations and training: by Zeus
He can maintain his ground as full well as
Any military man in the fleet,
In the disciplines of the pristine wars
Of the Picans or any other subject.Apollo.
I say, a good-day for a bloody fight,
Captain Thrace.Starbuck.
Good-day yourself, Commander Adama.Helo.
How go, Captain sirs? Have you readied the
Assault? Have the Cylons given up the ship,
Perchance?Taylor.
By Zeus you cads! tis ill done: tis ill done.
The ship's crew were not prep'd nor ready to
Meet with such a foe. They gave up most ground
Without a shot fired, not even having
A tin trumpet to sound retreat, and are
Holed up now in the ship's besieged bridge.
Upon my heart, I swear, my father's soul,
The fleet's civy ships are ill led; ill led;
To now give themselves over such as this:
I would have blowed up the ship, crew and all,
So the lords save me! In an hour: tis then
Our bidding shall be done, ill done or fair;
By my hands, it will be done!Starbuck.
Captain Taylor, I beseech you now, what
Orders hast ye been given for the raid?
We need to discuss breaches and entries,
Our disciplined teams and their cunning roles,
Our tactical formations, in my way
Of friendly communication with you
To clarify our plan and partly to
Satisfy my opinion, touching on
Our current posture; as that is the point.Taylor.
The bold Colonel has delegated the
Rescue onto my grim authority,
As he rightly fears that Galactica's
Untried boys will stroll straight into the vast
Luxurious ship waving Ambrosia
And thrice refined machine oil, trying to
Seduce the Cylons into feathered beds.Starbuck.
Pardon me, but I seem to have now spasms
Afflicting my throttling hand. Apollo.
Tis good she fights with her right, so it shall
Not slow her down. Taylor.
Mark whereof I speak. Three Viper pilots
Were on the Cloud Nine, twas they that sent word
Of the debacle, having surrendered
Without a shot, the council and Roslin
Now held hostage in this Cylon plot.Apollo.
Which three, pray tell? Which surrendered thus?Taylor.
Our own young Hotdog, who you trained yourself
And once risked his life to save you I'm told.
The two others, I think I know them not.
Screwball and Knuckles from the Pegasus
They're called but they set a bad example.Starbuck.
I'm familiar with the two men of whom
You speak, and should've guessed the very same.
Still, our plans roll on without them. We shall
Miss them not a jot.Apollo.
Now, it shall be good, good officers both:
And I shall quit you with good leave, as I
May not take occasion; as I must to
Galactica's bridge depart.Starbuck.
We should discuss the plans of the Colonel
At some length, I think. I sense that his plan
Will not match our men.Taylor.
It is no time to discourse, Zeus save me:
The risks are great, and the threatened ship, and
The Cylons entrenching there, and the crew:
It is no time to discourse. Cloud Nine is
Occupied, and they call us to the breach;
And we talk, and, by Zeus, we do nothing:
'Tis shameful: so Gods save me, 'tis shame to
Stand still; 'tis shame, by my hand: there are
Cylons to kill, a threat to throttle, and
There is nothing yet done, so Zeus save me!Apollo.
Ye gods what a mess, these legs of mine shall
Take it upon themselves to deliver
My inert body onto the deck, if
I stand witness this oncoming wreck.
I depart, lest I become ensnared in
This encircling jerk 'efore it becomes
Transmorgified into full cluster frak.
But mark me, I'd rather stay to hear some
Questions 'tween you two.Starbuck.
Captain Taylor, I think, look you, under
Your correction, twas two of your pilots
That surrendered, and of the assault team
There is not many of your ship—so we…Taylor.
Of my ship! Of my ship? Is a villain,
And a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal. What is
My ship? Who talks of my ship?Starbuck.
Look you, if you take matters otherwise
Than is meant, good Captain, peradventure
I shall think you not use me with that
Affability as in discretion
You ought to use me, look you: being as
Good a man as yourself, both in the fine
Disciplines of war, and in my craft in
The cockpit of my mirth, and in other
Particularities by which I send
Cylon souls searching for the rank infested
Ship that gave them birth.Taylor.
I do not know you so good a man as
Myself: so Hera save me, I will cut
Off your head and strip you down to private.Helo.
Gentlemen both, you mistake each other.

A claxon bell is sounded

Helo.
Time to mount and lock our loads. The battle
Now unfolds.Starbuck.
Captain Taylor, when there is more better
An opportunity to be required,
Look you, I will be so bold as to tell
You I know the disciplines of war;
And there is an end.Taylor.
Nay, this ends with you off the assault team.
You can cool your heals waiting for my men
To finish the work. Stand down, loud Captain.Helo.
You heard the good captain, my good Captain.
Back away, and from this hangar we go.

Exeunt

SCENE V. The Cloud Nine.

Enter LEOBEN and a few other human form Cylons
stand near a terminal which is displaying a live message
from Admiral Adama.

Adm. Adama. (filtered)
How yet resolve you Cylons on Cloud Nine?
This is the only warning we will proffer;
Therefore to our mercy give yourselves up;
Or like fanatics proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a
Military officer, a life that
Was once by choice but now by fate, I shall
In moments launch an assault to retake
Our fleet's favor'd ship, and I will not leave
A single Cylon on Cloud Nine unless
In the expanding tendrils of her rare
And vented atmosphere thee float adrift.
The extent of our mercy shall be reached,
And our fresh and able Marines, rough and hard,
At liberty with bloody arms shall range
With conscience cold as hell, plinking all you
Toasters like appliances in garbage heaps.
Your fresh and fair bodies hacked down and torn,
Gurgling thy last about damned flowing streams.
Speak; I am bound to hear.Leoben. (responding via console)
So art thou to despair, when thou shalt hear.
Mark that I stand openly on your ship,
Here at the beloved central fountain,
These luxurious gardens now emptied,
The ship's passengers imprisoned below.
What be it to me if in righteous war
You destroy in flames this proud dome and fields
As thy did our great ressurection ship,
For with smirks shall we watch you kill thine own,
Enraged to wrath, dealing desolation.
What is't to us, when you yourselves are cause
If your pure maidens burn in fire, or vent
Their skins in space, rather than languidly
Lay with those who want to raise their children?
The choice of their fate lies with thee entire.
Cheaply expend thee these civilian lives
To advance thy career, or become they
But numbers subtracted from tally boards?
What reins can hold the vengeful wickedness
Of the Colonial soldiers enroute
In their steel hull'd craft? I say but this.
You humans brave held this luxurious
Ship's broad helm but not her lightfast engine.
That precious and all-powerful muscle,
Which doth give life to this ship's distant leap.
We have torn and ripped and villainously
Rigged it with our Cylon efficiency.
Heed too thou this: Our Cylon brethren know
Of our position and this fleet's and how
This once celeritious leviathan's
FTL needs absolute replacement.
And so it be that thy weak fleet must jump.
Jump, sir, jump away as you always do,
But here this ship shall stubbornly remain,
Along with all her passengers and crew.
What say you? Stand down your assault or watch
As the fight grows grim, your numbers dwindling
Till everything and everyone be lost.
What say you? Will you yield us the ship
And this disastrous outcome avoid,
Or, too proud in defence, be thoroughly
Destroyed?Adm. Adama. (filtered)
I will be there with my accompaniment,
So that I may have the satisfaction
Of discussions on this development
With the soulless body you inhabit.Leoben.
We are open to the entreaties of
One such as yourself, esteemed as you are,
But by yourself alone, do come.
We provide guarantee of safe return.Adm. Adama. (filtered)
Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I'll go no further
Very well, alone I do come to meet.
And shall entreat with you where you now stand.
By that central fountain,Leoben.
Very well. We shall meet with thee in our
Assembled ranks, so you may behold us,
And be thereby afraid.

Col. Tigh.
Frack! Mother fracking frackers!Gaeta.
I give second voice to the frack.Apollo.
Unholy daggers, damn them! Our Roslin
Is on that ship!Dee.
Lords! frackin' frack frack! The Council of Twelve,
Entire is on that ship, whoa be us all.
They mean to decapitate our civil
Government, and have the means.Adm. Adama.
My officers, silence. At full throttle
What be a Viper's maximum flight time
From Galactica or Pegasus to
The Cloud Nine?Gaeta.
Based on current position, two minutes
Would elapse.Adm. Adama.
A mere minute would not be fast enough.
Very well, I must execute plan B.
Prep a Viper at once, and for me a
Flight suit and helmet. I go forth to a meet.
Apollo, Tigh, walk yon with me. Sergeant,
Go thee to my cabin and fetch my match
Pair of Gundt forties and their accoutrement.
Meet me in the hangar bay anon.Apollo.
Go not! By the lords it is a trap!Adm. Adama.
It be not trap but ambush, and through it
I must charge. Walk with me my son. To all.
Make highest alert sound throughout the ship.
Ready us for Cylon assault, and prep
The fleet a spot for hopeful rendevous,
And of two jumps thereafter, nay twenty,
And stand by to have all civilians jump
At first wiff of pursuing enemy.
Saul, make us proud. Have all pilots stand hot,
Ready in their Vipers to launch away,
Keep all heavy defense guns fused and primed.
You men know well the ready drill by heart.
I like not these blank and thoughtless stares.
See to your duty as if heretofore
All that hath elapsed had been but practice.
Dee, what communication to any
Poor hostage on that ship can you provide,
To the threatened ship's pilot or captain,
Or the people huddling in clumps now
'Gainst Cylon threats and tyranny?Petty Officer Dualla
My sir, I search the bands . A little time
And I should have it for thee, admiral.Adm. Adama.
'Tis time that I not have, nor do we all.
Work thou the com and relay unto me
As you find and query the hostage souls.
I need'st know if they be herded under
Dome or locked below. Where, how many and
What they do know. On such scattered tidbits
My plans must hinge. All ye know and harken.
One soft beloved sheep feels the wolves' teeth
And I must hasten to effect release,
Bash their gaping jaws now savoring in
Hungry anticipation of a feast,
And gods be willing, herd the lonesome ship
Back a-fleet. So say I, now do you all.
Colonel Tigh will return in a moment
To take command, and snap his own jaws to
Keep our fleet and ship in order, lest our
Confused panic blossom and leave us
Pale complected by console light, our blood
Pumping thin and our sudden startled minds
Rushing to give life our darkest fears.
Stand tall. Stand ready. I'm off to face our foe.

Exeunt Adama, Apollo, and Tigh.

Gaeta.
Okay now, look sharp one and look sharp all.
The DRADIS scope is clear. As one, breathe in.
I plot now the jumps to send the fleet on.Dee.
How missed we the arriving Raptors?Gaeta.
Recriminations can be laid aside
Until the Lords of Kobol choose how to
End this dreadful day, but when harsh blame lands
I think on our two chairs it shall descend.

Back to Adama, Apollo, and Tigh, walking briskly toward the hangar bays.

Apollo
How canst you deliver yourself unto
Our enemies so willingly?Col. Tigh.
You heard them, Adama my Admiral.
The Cylons shall be a-top of us and
All around, come here at any moment.
Surely, you cannot take your leave of the
Galactica in the middle of this
Dire crisis?Adm. Adama.
Our well known friend and fiend Leoben lies
Through his ceramic Cylon teeth. If the
Cylon base stars knew our whereabouts they'd
Be here upon us without his vainly
Boasted warning. Our fleet would have then jumped
Away gone, like birds startled from brush,
Leaving behind just Galactica and
Cloud Nine till we jumped ourselves far away
Upon the news of FTL failure
Afflicting the proud and beautiful Nine.
Have none of that. The bold and desperate
Cylons, hostages tight in hand, look to
Spook and rattle us, stampeding away
The fleet and staying our committed hands.
So that act is what I shan't do till my
Own hand is forced to act upon it.
Their very actions tell me skilled men and
Heavy transports might yet let us seize both
Ship and day.Col. Tigh.
Admiral, why yourself go, when we have
Teams of Marines?Adm. Adama.
The lying Cylon stalls for time, and so
Time be the substance I will not yield him.
I rush because rushing be the very
Thing they seek to avoid by endless talk,
And upon their beholding only me,
They will drop their guards and bring down their doom.
Keep the marines in the Raptors ready,
I shall summon them when things get hot and
Confusion reigns over the Cylon plot.
My plan is simple, as simple is best.
If the Cylons gather under the dome
As promised, I shall then fly straight at them,
Straffing at one of the giant panes and
Cruising through it's shattered glass, blasting all
Inside as they get vented out to space.
The ship's doors will seal up unto themselves,
Holding our humans in languid comfort
As the dead Cylons drift about outside.
If I see of a better plan enroute
I'll change up my attack, but this bold one
To me looks enough to win us the day.
My good friend Saul, return thee to the bridge and
Press Dee to query the hostages trapped
On yonder ship, asking them as to their
Location and specific condition,
Searching for a tragic flaw in this plan.
Apollo, dearest Apollo, please you
See to it that every Viper is prepped.
Hold yourself straight, as this day will surely
Bring us many grief stained tears.

Exit

SCENE VII. The Cloud Nine, the middle of a garden entrance.

Enter Leoben and SIX

Six.
'Tis certain he shall come to us alone.
Mark well, Adama is too proud to pass.Leoben.
And if he come not to call, my sister,
Then not a one of us will yield here; and
These gardens, these spacely lawns, will be then
Stripped away from such a careless people.
We have their much precious ship enfeebled,
And even crafty Adama cannot
Ease our demoralizing blow by a
Single blade of this ship's lifegiving grass.
How it must grind in their sides, those thousands
Of proud and weary warriors, to find there
Is nothing they possess that we cannot
By force take away.Six.
But still, you mark him, and watch him well,
And watch too his headstrong son, lest he like
A trapped and cornered beast lash out, engraged,
Even at the cost of his own paw. The
Adamas' destiny is not played out,
So take care that your God-fearing face does
Not end up a prideful portrait painted
On their hull.

Enter DORAL

Doral.
Important news I bear, my good cousins.
It seems that the high and most exalted
Colonial President was not on
Her ship, but riding along on this one,
She has been right at hand and under foot.
God favors us with fortune, and now the
Lady Roslin breathes and lives or grimly
Dies by our command, the proud and mighty
President now a puny pawn for us
To push and sacrifice to satisfy
Our plans.Leoben.
You hath beheld her with thine own eyes?Doral.
Indeed my cousin. Shall I have her brought
Before us here, so she can become an
Eye witness to her abandonment by
Her own fleet and people, eager to save
Their own hides from our oncoming assault?Six.
No. The heady space will only act to
Free her worried mind instead of winding
It much tighter, and she'll draw inner joy
From her good fleets lifesaving jump away.
The only emotion I'll have in her
Head be dread despair, helpless in her cage,
Stuffed into steerage as her ship founders
Under resounding Cylon feet, a fate
That draws near with the coming of our fleet.Leoben.
Until that moment she'll make a mighty
Lever against Adama and his seed.Six.
And discarded thereafter as too old
To breed.Doral.
What pointless pathetic lives these humans
Lead.Leoben.
They are but the everlasting puppet-
Headed victims of fate.Doral.
And we are fates master, because we swim
With it, not at it.Leoben.
We should teach them to understand it.
There is faith in fate.Six.
And fate comes from God, whose love they plain reject.
Just as assuredly as they do move,
They know not what they do.Doral.
Indeed, they be a mindless, guideless crew.Six.
And mystic guide they had is now ours too.
I go below, to sweat our imprisoned
Roslin, drawing her strained mind like a bow
To loose an arrow at Adama's heart.
I am the broom that must sweep all space clean
Of such Godless leaders as she.

Exit Six.

SCENE VIII. The Cloud Nine, Lower Decks, President's Office

Enter Knuckles, Screwball, Hotdog,
PRESIDENT LAURA ROSLIN.

Knuckles.
Hark madam President. The blonde Cylon
Woman this way comes.Roslin.
Thank you, officer.Knuckles.
Me they call Knuckles, and we shall protect
You, m'lady President.Screwball
Ever vigilant, we are.Roslin.
Of that I be so so sure.

Enter Six.

Roslin.
To what do I owe the overwhelming
Pleasure of this visit?Six
To my curiosity. So you are the
Colonial President, their champion.Roslin.
I do sternly, but with much love, champion
Their cause.Six.
And what doth be the nature of your cause,
Now scattered like ashes before a gale?Roslin.
To live.Six.
And to ever multiply your numbers.
In this your cause is lost and thus is thine.Roslin.
No cause were ever lost, though through cruel fate,
Perchance, the people who support it be.
But with life comes birth and with that comes hope,
Which are good parts, all essential to life.Six.
As is death. But exists another life,
An eternal life, 'tis only God's grace
That thou shouldst seek. Your deviance and sins
Be many because your flesh is weak.Roslin.
Grace? How darest you speak of such a state.
Foul devil, for gods' sake, why do you still
Trouble and torment us, the survivors left,
We who no more may bear a threat to you?
For you have turned the Colonies to hell,
Fill'd them with cursing cries and charred corpses.
If you take delight in heinous deeds,
Behold the shattered cities you there butchered.
O, Cylon witch, see, see! dead planets' wounds
Walk their vitrified streets of glowing ash!
Shame, shame on thy murders' enormity
Guilt, guilt wilt thou bear for eternity.
For 'tis thy presence that radiates death
From cold and empty veins, where false blood dwells;
To dark clockwork brains that programs compel.
Thy form, unhuman and unnatural,
Doth offend the gods' sensibilities.
Thy murderous, incomprehensible acts
Provoke man and the lords to vengeance seek.
O gods, which this laments, revenge our deaths!
O space, which this fleet sails, avenge our blood!
Either Zeus with lightning strike the Cylons dead,
Or space, tear open wide and eat them quick,
As thou dost swallow up collapsing stars
And circling planets like now smolders!Six.
The cleansing of your planets was God's wish,
And to his plan my heart obedient,
Though I allow that this did you offend.
But in its place I now offer you grace,
The divine grace that humans must accept
In place of producing still more children,
Spawning countless more graceless offspring,
Each babe raised in the worship of idols,
Perpetuating more generations
Of barbarous who know not God's grace..Roslin.
Thou hast not the place to speak of grace
Nor life, itself divine as baby's first cry,
Thou who hast enbraced the opposite role.
Of what good to us be divine grace if,
In accepting it, we thereby deny
It to our children, forbid them life, and
To the point, never letting them be born?
Condemning to a meaningless nothing
Not just ours, but all children yet to be?
What a tragic disgrace, not a grace, that
Would make.Six.
Yet thou wouldst deny life to us, we who
Are your children, if not of loin then of
Eye and hand and most thoughtful intellect.
We who only now seek God's loving grace.Roslin.
If grace comes from the gods, tis beyond our
Poor power to withhold the like from you.Six.
So it is, and so must it be. Thus, we seek
God's grace not from thee.Roslin.
What be it, what be the grace that doth lie
In delivering on unsuspecting
Past'ral fieldmen a nuclear attack,
Killing all by surprise, even children,
Through treachery and plot? Where you see grace,
I see naught but black and damnable hell.Six.
The grace is God's. It is part of his plan
For us all. As is our presence here now,
And yours.Roslin.
You are indeed here, on our ship, but you
Have not yet won this day. Perhaps the gods'
Plans are still in play.Six.
But we shall win, as certain as is grace.
We follow God's plan, as his most loving
Servants, and his plan is best for all.Roslin.
So you have said, but we object that our
Role in his plan be but to play the part
Of fresh made corpses.Six.
You fail to understand our aim, or his,
Or much of anything. We purpose not
Your death. We wish only your growth through him.
Had we wished you dead thou wouldst already
Be so, as sure as the Cylon feet now
Walking hard apace on thy decks. When we
Realized your profound flaws, flowing from your
Sad rejection of God's most divine grace,
We sought only to bring you to know him.
Yet since in any space were we have met,
Fleet a-fleet, you have sought forth to bite us.
We therefore painfully pulled all your teeth.Roslin.
We have a fang or two left, and with them
We will snap at thee til our very end.Six.
Always determined to kill us you stay,
Indeed unto your very dying breath.
I ask, what kind of parent tries so hard
To murder their children?Roslin.
In return do I ask, What kind of child
Tries and succeeds at murdering parents?Six.
One that hath murdering parents, when that
One wishes to grow up.Roslin.
Growing up is hard, but it happens whe'er
You wish or wish not, whether you act or
Do but sit in idle contemplation.
There need'st be no murderous feat to mark
Thy passage. There is only time, taking
Upon it to observe and thus to learn.
In this way do we grow.Six.
Young we may be, but we have observed much,
And quite painfully, on your bloody ways,
Your o'er weening vengeance, violent nature.
At the ever incipient threat of
Those flaws we have made hard blows with our fleet.
The natural following of this act
Is the path we now pursue, and thus we
Pursue you, and a rejoined destiny
Which will richly hybridize both our growth,
Sturdying us enough to accomplish
God's even higher plans.Roslin.
We have raised generations of children.
You quite damnly remain the only clutch
That refuses to grow up. We have fouled
Our nest with a psychopathic offspring,
And now we've paid a painful toll in blood.Six.
Yet as we have indulged in genocide,
Where God but said it be necessary,
We are the mirrored evil seed of you,
Our genocidal and loveless parents.
On this, growing up we did not refuse;
You forbade it, so we grew up despite
Your pithily violent rejections.Roslin.
But we are not the human's that made you,
So many long decades past. We too are
But the children of those too old humans.
The humans who gave you birth did birth me.
Are we not therefore your closest siblings?
What kind of child tries then to murder their
Brothers and sisters and cousins?Six.
Murder, murder, all you speak of is death,
Ever circling the one subject that so
Fascinates your minds, turning works to wrecks.
I wish instead to speak of sex. Of love.
Of mates. We are strong and young.Roslin.
Oh, one such as you wouldst focus on that.
I am old, growing frail. Will you grow old,
Your body weak, or are you just plastic,
So your looks will keep?Knuckles. (coughs)
On my word, they be both real.Screwball (snorts)
Ahem.Roslin.
You may impress our young and headstrong men,
But you have impressed me not the least, so
What are these great plans of which you speak?Six.
We seek some healthy young humans to take
Back with us to the Colonies. We wish
To have mates with which to breed.Roslin
Why do you not go frack yourselves?Six.
Because though our numbers are vast, we are
All as one, so breeding won't bear ripe fruit.
We have many models. For each of you,
I'm sure one wouldst thee suit. Love is God's plan,
Being followed surely now, on these decks.Roslin
Human blood with Cylon join'd! Never so.
Not to make twisted half-machine babies!
It can't be so; thou hast misheard your god:
Or your god be not but blasphemy, a
Vile demon who doth oppress with wrongs and
Damning us all in hell. Be well advised,
Not e'er on my ship again will I let
Such vile couplings take place.Six.
So you command, but when has any man
Obeyed his government instead of his
Encrotched brain?Roslin
This meeting is at an end. I'll listen
No more to your perverted blasphemies.Six.
Then return to your people, packed in and
Helpless under Cylon control.Roslin
Of that we shall see.

Exeunt Roslin

Six. (to the guards)
Mark upon whose skin you three now ogle.Screwball
Pardon, Ma'am Cylon, but we ogle not.Six.
The sight of me be odious to your eyes?Screwball
Madam Cylon, we are your captives here
And such as I, without your special pardon,
Dare not relate a man's judgement of form.
Waiting we were for thine angry outburst,
As was obvious Roslin dealt short with thee.
She was quite cross.Six.
As she should were she wise, if wise she be.
I am openly the usurper now,
Having the force and courage to succeed
And wreck her purpose, which brims her bile.Screwball
Quite, madam Cylon.Six.
And so, you brave and noble protectors
What say you three fine gentlemen, do you
Always guard such high and noble ladies,
Or perchance shower favored affections
On lesser mortals?Screwball
Get thee no vain ideas about us,
Bounteous ma'am. Flattery moves us not,
As we are Colonial officers.Six.
Nay, do not think I flatter;
For what advantage may I hope from thee
That no power hast but thy manly appeal
To seize the eye? Why should prisoners be flatter'd?
No, from candied tongue down to smooth warm rump
My arched spine radiates sincerity,
So believe me when I say that thou dost
Assume flattery from thy vanity.Screwball
Oh, not vain, us, though such be justified.Six.
I warrant you have vanity enough,
To make a full match to all the reasons.
But soft, voices tell me of hands busy
At hoarding bartering and pilfering
What little remains left to be scavanged
In this derelict fleet of worthless scraps.Knuckles.
If thou knowest of such rascals, do say,
For we would be more than happy to slap
Their sorry thieving bottoms in a cell.
Just who doth tell of this perfidity?Six.
I'd weigh my words before I give them breath.
I intend not to tell nor hand over
Three such useful hands to authorities.
Such men have pragmatic unwholesomeness
That strikes my fondest liking, but
Rumors are afloat through the zealous press,
Those e'er curious investigators,
That Adama might well be onto them.Knuckles.
That thrice damned conniving reporter
Must have talked! What did I tell you, Hotdog!
Trust nobody, for fear you be betray'd!Six.
Rumors do abound in a fleet as small
As this, which makes it hard to operate
Outside the long arm of Adama's law.
Yet I do find it sad that you waste your
Unscrupulous genius here, where there be
Little at all but an absoluteness
Of nothing worth owning, when I have whole
Planets emptied, with the richest plunder
Still sitting, piles upon huge piles of it,
In hopes that someone shall haul it away.Screwball.
Oh, you do, do ye? Piles of it, you say?Six.
Oh yes, piles on piles. Vast storage buildings
Stocked with ambrosia and casks of cold ale,
Hand picked fruits and ripe fresh vegetables, but
Most often steaks that seem to me miles thick.
But worst of all are armies of women,
Sitting around complaining about
The complete lack of good prick.Knuckles.
Ahem. Really now. Such a sad tale to greet
Mine ears.Six. (whispering)
So indeed, which be why I bend your ears.
Oft have I heard that theft sharpens the mind,
But makes it too fearful and desperate;
Think therefore on revenge and living well,
Cease to steal and accept my offered weal,
Where your head may lie on my throbbing breast:
Thou art the body that I would embrace;
For thruth, you can daily take twelve of me,
Or else you can have your pick of others.
Live Viper pilots would be as bandits
On worlds now absent such a virile touch.
Cast your minds to it. Imagine the scene.
Women lined up to serve you in your beds,
Bearing priceless gifts and baring their chests
For chance to seduce your loving favors.Screwball
I ask what price be on these priceless gifts?
And what dost thou want from us in return?
Every scheme has angles, so what be yours?Six.
I want your love. 'Tis God's wish for us all.Screwball
Nay, I ask what you want in return for
The dotings of serveant girls and piled stash. Six.
I tell thee. To Galactica return.
Disable it and end the futile flight.
'Tis best for us if it jumps not again,
So crew and fleet return home and enjoy
A share of the plunder that's theirs by right.Hotdog. (bends over and makes to vomit)
Nay. Nay I say. We cannot.Knuckles.
What didst thou say, oh little one? Can not?
The courage of a trembling mouse you have.
Be you a rat or a cowardly knave?Hotdog.
Pilfer and requisition form a flaw
Whole unlike this treason you contemplate,
Which is greed of a different caliber.
I must go and close my ears to this talk.
I'll not entertain Cylon villainy,
Er we shall all regret discoursing with
This seductress' scheme!Six. (presses a button on a hand gadget)
Your rejection much pains me. Tis too bad.
The impetuous young lack wisdom, with their
Minds o'er mastered by fluttering stomachs,
Which serve in them as witless governor
Of their simple-minded morality.

Enter Simon and Doral

Hotdog.
Don't step a foot closer, damned villains!Screwball.
Seize the traitorous fiend!Hotdog.
Let me go thou misdesigned toasters! Help!Six.
Do not struggle 'gainst us so, my young buck.
I would not waste your life or loins.Hotdog.
Unhand me Cylon clones! Thou hast much
Violence for one laying claim to grace,
Thou foul defacers of God's offered peace!
Help me Knuckles! Teach these Cylons their place!Knuckles.
I will not choose to weep if you should vent him
In cold space, where belongs a tattling rat.
How oft have I explained to you, Hotdog.
Trust nobody, for fear you be betray'd!Hotdog.
Rogues! Thou art baser than a recycled turd!
Nay, you think now to vent me into space?
By whose authority dost thou play thug?Six.
By my Cylon word alone, tender man.
This is my ship, and I am God's serveant.
In thy defiance and eager earnest
Thou hast threatened betrayal of thy friends,
From whom condemnation was thus pronounced.
Good Simon, come and bid this one slumber.
We'll deal with him later, aft' schemes complete.Simon.
Ease your struggles, pilot. 'Tis just a shot.
It will be painless, I assure.Hotdog.
What? A vile poison courseth through my veins.
I am undone.Simon.
He sleeps, perhaps to wake in Base Star's hold.Screwball.
Goodnight, sweet fool. Enjoy your dreamless doze.Knuckles.
Elegantly handled, madam Cylon.Six.
A lone human collapsed at our feet is
But a weak and worthless satisfaction.
Lay the man down in some comfortable place,
Good Simon, if thou wouldst please.Simon.
He wouldst feel no discomfort on a rock.
But on benches outside he'll nestle snug.

Exeunt Simon with Hotdog.

Screwball.
Now where were we, 'fore so interrupted
By such a complete lack of character?Six.
I was offering you love, if you but
Disable your two battlestars.Screwball.
Ah, but that shall just increase our human
Competition, won't it my good Knuckles?Knuckles.
Indeed. The ladies will then cast their eyes,
And their thighs, on other men.Six.
The others have not done us good service
And will find them scarce of our warm mercies.
Do with them as you will, the call is yours.
But think on this. In doing this for us
We shall owe you our thanks and debt
Where other men have struck up but our ire.
So 'long with soft flesh in your bed cometh
Mechanical muscle doing your will.
Those who have wronged thee can soon feel thy wrath,
Punish those who hath disrespected thee,
Show them their place and rub their noses in it.
Disrespect too those who sit snug in ships
Protected by your life-risking dogfights
Who honor not your sacfice of life.
Yet heed my words, if you don't do for us
Then you shan't woo with us, yet still you shall
Sit full within the compass of our grasp.
If you think to escape us, the fleet will
Learn the full of your knavish thievery
And this talk, showing your duplicity.
Thou hast no future with them, but thou canst
Have one with us, filled with endless pleasure,
The only fighting then betwixt the girls
Arguing over who is next to bed.
Endless days on the beach or mountain parks.
Doted on by doe eyed serving wenches,
Ne'er having to lift a single finger,
The envy of all humans in this fleet.
Only a brilliant, bold, and farsighted
Man could pull this off and in it succeed.
Art thou man enough to match this challenge?
A man that fortune rewards hath taken
Praiseworthy steps: and blest are those whose good
Abilities and judgment are so well
Commingled with rare opportunity.Screwball
You are damnable in your schemes, fair love.Six.
I merely plot to have you in my bed.Knuckles.
Were then that all plots were as crafty.Screwball
So in return, we disable our warships?Six. (rubbing Screwball)
Yes my man. The FTL's must die.Screwball
Can perchance I view the merchandise first?Six.
Inspect what and as thy will. I promise
In time we shall achieve not but the most
Complete and languorous satisfaction,
But be not now time for such distractions.
To return thee to thy ship we must lay
A cunning trap. Adama is enroute
To parley with our assembled forces.
His security bears our guarantee.
As offer of our honest scrupules we
Return you to him then bid you depart.Knuckles.
Well what about me? Don't I get a girl?Six.
We can shortly provide you another me,
To idle with you as you wait my call,
Receiving which, you must stroll out to meet
Adama. Relate to him your state and
Emphasize we harmed you not the slightest.
He will question thee about positions
Of our emplaced bands. Tell him what thy wish,
For thy knowledge bears naught of any use
To him nor rings it ominous to us.Knuckles.
What of Hotdog? Adama shall inquire.Six.
Present to him thy drug spent companion,
He'll be out hours yet.Screwball
As you wish, fair lady in offer'd deed.
Thinks me now that the Cylon's most brutal
Reputation is wholy undeserved.Six.
You are good friend and a true gentleman.
Had all humans been as gracious as thee
Our disputes would have not come to battle.
By heaven, your reward shall be earned today,
Till steaks turn you green from o'er dose of cow!
And so good trusted friends depart anon.
Wait with your slumber'd friend in the lobby.
In a moment I shall rejoin you there
As were we lovers too long apart, and
Kiss away thy loneliness with passion.Screwball
By your command, madam Cylon, we go.

Exeunt Screwball and Knuckles.

Doral.
Fascinating, my esteemed sister.
From chance encounter with thieving knaves
Thou hast concocted a plan better formed
Than our original nefarity.Six.
With candied tongue I pipe them like a flute.
How easily thieves turn upon themselves
At any advantaged comfort offered,
Always chasing random after carrots
Until you but show them bigger carrots,
Thus leading them off a cliff by the nose.Doral.
Indeed they are so, always seeking low
Born pleasures instead of God's divine grace.Six.
They chase what seems easy enough obtained,
And grace taking patience that they have not,
There be no need to wonder at its lack.Doral.
Still and yet was amazing how they turned.Six.
I have much experience with which to turn them.
As all men seek to lie to and with me
I bear myself like a fullsome carrot
And play to their bold lies and vanity.
Seducing them with every capital vice
That a weak man possesses and strong man,
On perceiving danger, wisely eschews.Doral.
Tis obvious enough you found two mean men,
Base by their nature, base by their practice.Six.
The one risk was that cordial affection
For their familiar fellows would o'er ride
Their natural and base inclinations,
But to clinch them certain to my bosom
I fish slapped them with the gamut of sin:
Lust for me, gluttony for food now rare,
A whole planet's stock of greed, endless sloth,
Wrath at their o'er bearing superiors,
Envy of those above them or those now
Idling away out of front line danger,
And of course a thief's pride to pull this off.
With seven shot of vice in my barrel
The paired knaves could not but be hit full face.Doral.
Forsooth, when thou seest a man act a fool
Take full advantage 'fore he wises up,
And in taking advantage of these fools
Your execution were as beautiful
As your most languid and rapturous smile,
Compromising three and bending two.Six.
Such men are easier controlled than fought,
And as this pair's thoughts venture no further
Than from hungry stomach to unspent loins
To empty purse, they were already thrice weak.
Yet I turned them not upon their fellows,
For in fullness they were already bent.Doral.
A thief be a man that's already turned
Upon his human brothers, viewing all
Round as foreigners to be dealt with sharps.
'Tis a mark of thieves base tribal nature
That all be plunder and all strangers marks.
Thus they willing abuse their companions.
'Tis a shame such men bear two faces.Six.
Man hath two sides: a dagger bearing front
Mirrored by a back for their collection.Doral.
O happy daggers, how you drive them home.Six.
My daggered men will daggers drive. The knaves
Are as homing missiles fired at the heart
Of two patsy Battlestar's FTL's.
Repaying them the favor, our stealth men
Acting in place of their stealth ship.Doral.
The foul crimes done in their days as master
shall be burnt and purged away.Six.
And so we are revenged and go to heaven.
Get you to Leoben and inform him.
I go to reharden our missile's will.

Exeunt all, after which A ceiling panel opens
to reveal a hidden electronic eavesdropper.

SCENE IX. The Cloud Nine, the middle of a garden entrance.

Leoben.
Aye, that is a brilliant development,
Brother Doral, however did our fair
Sister come up with it, or find two such
Useful fools and traitorous misborn knaves?
However did she guess the officers
Were weak moralled and subject to greed's price?Doral.
She had word of suspicions 'bout the pair
From our imbedded blow dried journalist,
Who plays investigative reporter,
Disguising herself under biased slant,
Piping notes that would warm Cylon morale.
At length had she interviewed them about
Their stunning requisitions, and soon found
They didst act with no authorization.
Was luck the pair was here, or given their
Many fingered greed and the booty here,
Perhaps not luck but predictable boon.Simon.
Hark. He comes, the old man comes. The word is
Relay'd from our e'er vigilant cousins
Posted round. Adama hath launched a'space
In a Viper, sure due here in minutes.
I go to recheck our elaborate
And busied preparations.Doral.
Heady, glorious day.Doral.
It be now confirmed that he flies alone.
Summon our brothers to this hallowed ground,
So that we may greet on his arrival,
And show him the power of our numbers. Leoben.
Sweet recompense for our clownlike arrival.Doral.
Indeed. Despite our o'er weening numbers,
A pair of Raptors can hold half of us.Leoben.
Quite yes, depending on who you there held.Doral.
For my part, I held on quite sweetly.Leoben.
I assume, therefrom, that you rode here hard
Enpacked with the ladies.Doral.
I was the very sandwich.Leoben.
Tis too bad they be your sisters.Doral.
Twas okay. With eyes closed, ladies all press
The same.Leoben.
Thou hast a too flexible mind, my bro'.Doral.
Not flexible enough by half, me thinks,
For the journey we endured, not that I
Over refrained from strenuous flexing.Leoben.
Thou art the wolf, in taste and shamelessness,
For truth.Doral.
Aye, and with wolfish paws I'll devour
Full half of Cloud Nine's blossom'ng young poot.

Enter SIMON followed by a dozens copies each of Simon,
Doral, Leoben, Six, and "GALACTICA" SHARON.

Leoben.
Welcome breathren. We here await the
Arrival of our chief remaining foe.Simon.
As you have asked, Adama's path is clear
From the hangar bay to this now guarded
Garden fountain. We maintain 'lectronic
Watch of the space all around, the movements
Of the ships of their small fleet. In this,
There will be no funny business.Leoben.
Well done, my brother. Rattling their cage
Has only just begun.

Exeunt

SCENE X. Adama's Viper in the space near Cloud Nine

Enter Viper with Adama in cockpit.

Dee.
Viper One, what be your status?Adm. Adama.
Enroute, but I am not called Viper One,
For that ship would be for President Roslin.Dee.
Understood, Viper Two.Adm. Adama.
Viper Two is a ship in which our Vice
President Baltar wouldst nervously sit,
Though he sits nervously in any ship.Dee.
What be your call, and how is your status?Adm. Adama.
This is Viper Three and my status fine,
Flying simultaneous in Vipers
Numbered one two and three, a trick untaught
In flight school.Dee.
My apologies my admiral, sir.
Forgive if I worry too much o'er you.
Since you've been long out of the cockpit, sir,
If you'll pardon my familiar concerns.Adm. Adama.
Worry not for me, Dee, care to the Nine.
Hast thou made contact with passengers there
Imprisoned, or anyone still free?Dee.
Aye, and all are held sealed in lower decks,
Behind doors locked and welded to prevent
Swift rescue or perchance a bold escape.
The latest words were that all the Cylons,
Human looking to the one and all, have
Gathered at center dome to await thee.Adm. Adama.
News most interesting, the hostages
Sealed up safe and the Cylons massed to greet.Dee.
Yes sir. The scene has that appearance, sir.Adm. Adama.
I see them now through the glass, all gathered,
Fierce and defiant, near the very heart
Of open space under englassed dome.
All are arrayed round the central fountain.
Fifty, perhaps sixty, all armed and geared.Dee.
No hangar is yet opened, admiral,
And when so it will be difficult fit,
A narrow treacherous needle to thread,
Even for one so skilled as Apollo.Adm. Adama.
I've been flying since 'fore thou wert born, Dee.
Worry not o'er my skills with stick and thrusters.Dee.
Please but go cautiously against them sir,
Your paired pistols 'gainst a gross of toasters
Bearing combat arms be not a won fight.Adm. Adama.
Of that we shall see. Patch me through, across
Encoded channel, to Could Nine's command.
I have to discuss much that bears upon
My unfolding greeting.Dee.
Aye sir. You're now connected to Mayhill.
Precious luck, and may the gods be with you.bridge background
So say we all!Adm. Adama.
So say we all. So say we all.
(static noise, buzzing)
Cloud Nine, this is Viper Three.
Cloud Nine, this is Viper Three.Cpt. Mayhill – Cloud Nine.
This is Cloud Nine. Viper Three, I hope thou
Hast brought friends, cause we in totality
Are locked down, awaiting rescue by our
Vaunted Colonial fleet sure to arrive
In o'erwhelming numbers.Adm. Adama.
Nay, Cloud Nine. This day you get only me.Cpt. Mayhill – Cloud Nine.
Well gods be fracked, get thee on thy fracking
Radio and bid fracking Adama
To make haste. His esteemed laziness must
Get men and gear and get us help out here!
Holy fracked Athena, the man sends forth
But one frail Viper to perform the work
Of two companies of Marines.Adm. Adama.
I shall relay unto him the message.
But by the while, he sends me strict commands
To follow, if you be as competent
At saving your ship as at losing it.Cpt. Mayhill – Cloud Nine.
I'll not be blamed for this! Galactica
Bears fault that Cylons penetrate the fleet.
Adama and his incompetent crew
Hath doomed us all!Adm. Adama.
Two Raptor's clutch o' Cylons, thereafter,
O'er ran and disabled your ship, though they
Were outnumbered fifty to one at least,
Like a raging wolf tearing through chickens.
Mark me, the situation is most dire.
There be not time for recriminations,
And the more you win your pained arguments,
The more certain you shall lose this fight.
Yield now your pride or turn away my help.
I have other fair ships I can visit
That give me little gripe about my work.Cpt. Mayhill – Cloud Nine.
Apologies, Viper Three. We are tense,
Given to elaborate our nightmares.
The Cylons aboard are in warlike form,
Threatening all with most painful death if
We deviate one fair fig out of line,
But they have for some reason passed us back
Control of docking bay two, starboard side,
Perchance for you to dock therein.Adm. Adama.
Thank you, Nine. I need your wits about you.
Have you control of sublight engines, and
Thrusters, life support, gravity, and such?
Answer with celerity, for it bears
On escaping your dire predicament.Cpt. Mayhill – Cloud Nine.
Aye Viper Three, we have control of much,
But not passengers held on decks below,
Yet be warned, we know not what devious
Cylon gadgets are planted on our ship.Adm. Adama.
I'm sure there be a bushel of such, but
Those are your manifesting fears that speak.
Ignore them and listen to only mine.
I must ask you some simple questions now,
'Bout your ship and its environs.Cpt. Mayhill – Cloud Nine.
Ask at will, Viper Three. Our ears are yours.Adm. Adama.
Do you control your maneuver thrusters?
The giant cargo door on docking bay two?
What of your artifical gravity?Cpt. Mayhill – Cloud Nine.
A moment as we check and check double.
Aye on all counts, Viper Three.Adm. Adama.
Thank you, Nine. I move round to dock with thee.
But mark, your dome may vent 'fore I am done.Cpt. Mayhill – Cloud Nine.
Don't confess that you plan to break the dome!
That is fully half of the fracking ship!
On whose high blown authority do you
Risk my ship? Just who do you think you are?Adm. Adama.
Bill the boss, Captain. Stand to carry out
My orders instantly, or all is lost.Cpt. Mayhill – Cloud Nine.
Standing by.

Six.
He hovers, drifts, uncertain of his course.Leoben.
He sits.Simon.
He stalls.Doral.
He fears.Sharon.
Nay, he plots. But on what I cannot say.Leoben.
I will raise him and goad him and rile him.
Simon, pass unto me the radio.Simon.
Here, Leoben. Rile him, and rile him well.Leoben.
Adama, be you there? Or has some mouse
Crawled into thy cockpit, now distracting
You with a challenge fit for a pilot
As rusty as thyself.Adm. Adama.
I am here, and waiting.Leoben.
You seem adrift. Perhaps you hope a gust,
Or some nebulous wind from a comet,
Will coax you into our landing bay, and
Thus avoid a test of your brittle bones
And nigh retired reflexes, the which would
Leave you banging your frail Viper into
Drums and tangling cables, like a tired and
Forspent geezer trying to calm a stallion.Adm. Adama.
It seems the first law of growing old holds
For Cylons as well as humans. Mark it.
The young have no respect, lest their elders
Teach it hard unto them, 'tis a lesson
They are shy to learn and rarely heed, which
Is why young be so commonly common,
And why the old remain as rare as gold.
If they'd but respect their fewer fathers,
Fewer tragedies we should see unfold.Leoben.
You speak with veritable truth, old man,
But not the great tragedy of your race,
Which was in how it did treat its children.
Even now you quake to face us, arrayed
In our victorious splendor, our young
And spritely feet planted on human decks,
With this ship's turgid souls enpacked below,
Helpless to steer their fate 'tween slave and corpse.
All wait the arrival of Adama,
Gods' gift to war, now but a helpless lamb,
His tongue forced to discourse on surrender.
You hesitate and stall for time old man,
Drifting to starboard like a silver-hair
Flumoxed 'bout where and how to park a car.Adm. Adama.
Tis truth that I am old, but I but have
Seen few more years than this rebuilt Viper,
And both have seen great service in days past,
And we will see us some good service still.
History we have, and 'tis our teacher,
One thing it hath taught me, and teaches yet,
'Tis easier to go through open doors.
So how may one look to do good service,
When young are too flighty and inconstant
To open the doors to the landing bay?Leoben.
Doors?Doral.
Frack.Simon.
Opening the doors to cargo bay two.
I beg to indulge your pardon, brothers,
I have only partial control still yet.Leoben.
Your way is clear, and we await you here.
Permission is granted to come aboard,
Here entreat with us, your dreaded rivals.Adm. Adama.
I'm in. I will face off with you forthwith.Simon.
Closing the outer doors. His hide is ours,
Come thick or thin.Leoben.
Welcome, great Adama, our ship is yours,
If you can but take it. Yet if you think
To perchance surprise us or losing hope,
Go down in a blaze of glory. Mark this,
We know of your matched pair of Gundt forties.
Tis an underestimated weapon,
But a pea-shooter in comparison
To what we have brought to subdue this prize.
If you but count Cylons and your bullets,
We shall retain the advantaged numbers,
Even if all your shooting be perfect.Adm. Adama.
Tis true I meant to face you with two guns,
And maybe you saw in your flowing stream.
But now it seems I'm trapped inside the bay,
Unable to walk forward or go back.Simon.
I'm having troubles with the exit doors.Leoben.
Try all the doors, my brother, and quickly.
I won't be deprived of this proud greeting.Simon.
I try them all and achieve sweet success.
The inner cargo door doth open now.Leoben.
Adama. We await your arrival.

Enter Chorus

Chorus
We noted first when starting this good play
That fancy effects were lacking, so use
Your inward eye to see what I describe:
First float the Cylons in the air as the
Ship's captain cuts off gravity. He then
Alurches down the ship from under them
To raise them up still higher. Cylons swim
In air and then Adama's Viper comes
At once from distant cargo bay a-glide.
It flies at them with bursts of thrusters jets
And certain purpose. See it in your mind.

Exit Chorus

Doral.
What the Frack?!Six.
Grab hold, grab hold of something! Simon.
Unfairly he cheats us!Sharon.
Nay, fairly he beats us.Leoben.
What is this trick he plays! He vexes us!Adm. Adama. (filtered)
This old man that you hath been insulting
Is a Viper pilot known as "Husker",
Jetting to you in a Viper to strafe
With free will at your floating, flailing forms.
It seems your welcoming party is fracked,
All floating and spinning from front to back.
As you said, I have indeed brought two guns,
But more than my churlish antique pistols.
Overdue to qualify at gunnery,
I see floating before my aged eyes
An almost perfect opportunity.
What say you, flapping Cylon target drones?
Shall I make eye guide on to finger or,
Giving you a fair choice, would you rather
Discourse on this day's promised surrender?Doral. (floating)
I have a bead, and will now take his head.
*shot* (he goes tumbling in a circle)Adm. Adama. (filtered)
A fools attack, your circus clown clear missed
And now entertains as an acrobat.
I neither die nor tumble, given a
Viper's control of rate and attitude,
With aim driven gunnery computers
And finely beaded target reticles.
I sit facing instruments that serve naught
But to enhance my lethality, while
You'll soon float in clouds of piss and corpses.
Do you wish to still press your losing game
As I do jet at you yet closer?Simon.
Leoben, my brother, he dare not shoot
Those dread pair of Raider killing cannon
Lest he wish to crack and rupture the dome.
Relay to him that his desperate bluff
Be called.Leoben.
You do bluff us well, brave Adama, but
Methinks you look not where your cannon shot
Will go after it overtravel us,
Whether it strike at us or strike us not
You will but shatter this great dome and vent
Your precious ship and passengers to space.
Now end this childish game. Your point is made
And honor saved, but we have serious
Matters to discuss, and your infirm eyes
Can't well hit us square in the exhaust port.Adm. Adama.
I need not hit you in your exhaust port,
Nor on any other part of your ass.
You mistake me for one who gives a frack
How your Cylon bodies vent into space,
Just that they most assuredly go there.
My first plan was in through the vaulted dome,
Blasting it just to get at thee within.
As for the passengers, you've locked them in
Snugly behind the ship's pressure tight doors,
Safe from our raids, but safer still from space.
So I trust not to my now rusty aim
To ensure your demise, I trust my lack.
With my first shots, we all go into black
In a hurricane of wind and fury,
Me hot and free in my Viper, and all
Of you fool Cylons venting your life's fluids
So preciously from mouth and nose and ass.
Why need I to aim when I cannot miss?Leoben.
You dare it not!Adm. Adama.
I donned not flight suit and helmet to dare,
But to win, and for my part, it would make
Me a shorter path to Galactica,
Avoiding all those hoisted barrels and
Cables hazarding now the hangar bay.
I urge you to surrender nakedly.
Fling your guns and weapons out and away,
Along with your clothes so thickly stitched with
Cylon perfidity and clever traps.
The other option tensions trigger finger,
Which I promise be loud, bloody, and brief.Leoben.
Very well Adama, you have us now,
But your victory will be all too short,
For this ship is still jumpless before our
Oncoming fleet.Adm. Adama.
In my harshest experience, tis far
Better to win a fleeting victory
Than to lose one, for losing marks your last.Doral. (pushing his gun away, hard)
Phase one is undone, and so are we here.
Perhaps we back to second plan,
And jump this ship clear to the Cylon fleet.
Let our many Raiders deal with this man.Sharon.
Would that our control of their FTL
Was operated by wireless remote,
Instead of tethered to the ships controls
Where we cleverly, or not, spliced it in.Doral.
The mission entire is not so lost yet,
Our sister hath made us a third option.Simon. (stripping)
Tis not then truly lost, though Adama
Has most bold outfoxed us this heady day,
We shall a while as patient prisoners,
Then see who pipes the tune come evening time.Doral.
There be worse ways to while than floating here
In a dense cloud of our naked sisters.
Truly do I perceive it. In zero G
Their breasts have lost ten years!Leoben.
Ha! In victory and defeat, you stay
So much the dog.

November 11, 2005

Ronald D Moore's Inner Voice

[Since we have a few fans of Battlestar Galactica here, I thought I'd toss this up. This post carries a geekiness warning level of 3.5 or higher (out of 4), since it concerns the inner workings of the new Battlestar Galactica TV series on the Sci-Fi channel, a dark look into the mind of its creator and producer, Ronald D Moore. If you're a level three geek or lower, you probably want to skip it.]

Ronald D Moore's Inner Voice[s]

Ronald Moore sat at his computer, staring at the template. He ran his hand over to the man's file, opened it, and stared at the face paper-clipped to the cold, impersonal resume. He pulled out another cigarette, holding it unlit in his hands as he drained his small tumbler of whisky, the ice cubes clinking in the glass. Of all the parts of his job, this is the one he hated the most, the one no one had prepared him for, the one executive producers don't discuss with their peers. Another one of his men was dead, a wet-behind-the-ears Lieutenant they'd dubbed Crashdown, and Ron had to write the dreaded letter home. These were often such a whitewash, and the inherent dishonesty tortured him.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Witwer,

I regret to inform you that your son, Samuel Witwer, has given his life in the finest tradition of the screen. He was loved and respected by all who knew and served with him, and it was only through his heroic actions, under the direst circumstances, that the lives of other great characters were saved. He died bravely, and with honor. You can be proud of him, because we all certainly were.

Ronald D. MooreExecutive ProducerBattlestar Galactica

It was a damn lie, and he hoped Witmer's parents would never see the episode. It was not a good death, as heroes go. He lit his cigarette, refilled his glass, and sat back and stared at the words on the screen. The guilt and the whisky burned in his stomach. How many characters - actors damn it, had to die? How many had he already sent to their deaths? Yet he knew the war would go on. Maybe Spielberg said it best in Saving Private Ryan. "Good characters have to die, so that others may live." He took another sip and puffed his cigarette, the smoke burning his eyes. So many were already gone, and for what? Dying to advance the plot, to set up the next scene? Where would it all end? So many names. So many faces. All gone now. Sam Witwer, John Mann, Ryan Robbins, Colby Johannson, Paul Cummings, Tamara Lashley, James Remar, little Haili Page, Lorena Gale. Lorena. Why did she have to die? She was a priestess, for frack's sake! "Frack" - even he was saying it now. He was cracking under the stress.

What if they made a war movie and nobody died? They did that with War Games. Mathew Broderick was in that one. Then he grew a mustache and led hundreds of men into a slaughterhouse in Glory. No, you win a war by fighting a war, trying to preserve the lives of your characters as you can - not by putting it off until some psycho director hires them away for some pointless Russian WW-II epic. But then he'd already done that, hadn't he? He'd wiped out twelve fracking planets just because it was the STORY. He could've fought that decision if he'd been willing to go to the mat. So what if the higher ups wanted to stick to the original concept, the concept was a genocidal disaster! And he had a hand in it – a big hand. At least he didn't have their faces haunting him every night, since the destruction of the twelve planets was just backstory. Anyway, he'd had nightmares enough about killing off the dozens of actors he personally knew. Hiring and firing twelve planets worth of actors was simply beyond his comprehension. When you're rounding the pink slips to the nearest billion, it all becomes meaningless. The thought shocked him. That he'd had the thought shocked him. Was he starting to think like a genocidal Cylon? The saddest part was that all of his moral turmoil came directly from trying to appease an old basement-bound fan base, those few hard-cores who never threw away their old Battlestar Galactica lunchboxes.

LUNCHBOXES! I Forgot the lunchboxes! Oh, nevermind… Glenne's visiting, and she'll be here half the night chatting with Terry about costumes. All those two ever talk about is clothes, clothes, and more clothes. Of course, what should I expect when I married an Emmy winning costume designer? Sometimes it irked him that BattleStar Galactica's costume designer could go over his head, getting his wife to overrule him, and this on a show where his word was supposedly final. Well, at least the pair would handle the lunchboxes, and he might as well stay upstairs and out of earshot, as always. He tossed back another sip of whisky and stared blankly into space. He was drinking tonight. Every time Glenne dropped by he just stayed upstairs, got a bit lit, and then stumbled off to bed. He idly wondered why for a moment, and then looked at the ice cubes shifting in his glass, noticing that a long ash had formed on his cigarette.

He watched it slowly burning back – returned to his dour mood, and thought, "the ember burns along they way my plots burn through my cast." Every now and again his cigarette made a barely noticable pop, like some bright character sacrificed to the all-consuming story arc, an arc formed only by the slow action of fire. Then the long ash snapped and crashed down on his keyboard. He startled, leaned over, and blew it away with his whisky-tainted breath, giving his cigarette a quick flick on the ashtray to clean the rest. So too each arc concludes, with a few final dramatic sacrifices to rekindle the surviving embers, the more permanent members of the cast. But he might throw them away, too, if the price is high enough - or if their agent's price goes too high. Once certainty about war is that there are always replacements, and yet then a day comes when there aren't, and you fold it all up and walk home with your scars and mementos – and your nightmares.

He knew he should keep his distance from his cast so favoritism wouldn't cloud his judgment. His directors were the ones who gave the final orders for each assault, and had to live with the inevitable deaths that followed. But the directors don't have to know the actors on a personal level, and that studied distance is as much for their protection as for anyone's. There are limits to what a man can shoot, to how many deaths he can film, and then one day he snaps, retiring to sitcoms where nobody ever dies and the scripts are in ALL UPPER CASE.

The actors have it so much easier: March here, dig a hole, die there. Just follow directions and remember your training. They can kill each other week after week because they can dodge the personal responsibility for it. They're not writing the scenes, choosing who lives and who dies, deciding who gets promoted to a cushy job on the bridge and who ends up face down in the mud - before begging for voice-over work in Anime. Each hopes they will die a hero, that their death will count for something in the larger world, that decades later children will still re-enact the famous scene, like John Wayne's in Iwo Jima. But in truth, for every actor that dies a hero, a hundred more end up playing a corpse on CSI – excepting our fabulous blonde CSI corpse. Boy, bet that producer feels like he threw away the winning PowerBall ticket. Ron snorted into his glass at the thought of it, breaking his trance. He snuffed out his cigarette and sat back.

He knew he was doing what he could to reduce the butcher's bill. Emphasizing personal conflict, tension, and dialog - instead of having Vipers blown to bits week after bloody week. That's one reason he'd charted a new course for sci-fi, a genre where space operas spat out new fighter pilots faster than a spaghetti western reloaded six-shooters. Sure, you can toss an actor into a cockpit and call him a pilot, but they never survive more than couple episodes, and that's if they're lucky. The maneuver warfare theorists were right: Do not engage in a fight that doesn't significantly contribute toward achieving your objective. It just wastes time, resources, and personnel. We don't fight wars to give warriors an excuse to fight, and we shouldn't waste actors on fights that don't advance an arc. A producer's job is deciding which of the possible arcs do the most to advance the plot. As all possible arcs eat budgets, and many arcs eat men, the producer has to reconcile his soul to the costs.

Ronald's eyes refocused to see the bottom of his glass. The ice cubes had become smooth and wet, but they would still do. He refilled his glass and took out another cigarette, lighting it and taking a long, deep drag. He knew he was a hero to many and a despicable revisionist butcher to others. He'd long since reconciled himself to that. He could not please everyone, unless he could solve all the galaxy's problems with a wave of his hand. It would appease some to make Galactica a happy show, a Mayberry BSG, but he had to live in the reality he was creating. Cylons had wiped humanity off the map, and now humanity was reduced to drifting refugees without any navigation charts. Multiply the Holocaust by 10,000 and pack the handful of survivors into overloaded ships, set them adrift in space, and let's see if they stop off to play the slots at the Cylon Palace Casino. Yeah. The original aired that one.

This show was necessarily from a darker reality, and yet there were days the strain on him was too much, when he longed to see Patrick Stewart and LeVar Burton show up in a shuttlecraft, spouting some gobbledygook about inverse field variances and then ordering a jump to Sector Zero. No more needless deaths, no more pain, just roll the credits and queue the theme. It would all be so easy. Then he remembered the tragic arc that led Picard to Wolf 359, drained his glass, and felt the slow burn trace down his throat. Even all too perfect captains meet their match. Maybe that's why they rely on producers for backup in holodeck tommy-gun fights.

No, if he was going to fight this war, he would fight it on his own terms. He would fight the war with the army he's got, not the one he wants. Rumsfeld said that, and by god if Rummy knows anything, it's how to handle snide little press bitches on their soapbox. Ron chuckled at the thought, imagining himself at the podium, bursting out with, "You are an embarrassment to yourself, your website, and every adult that's gone out and got a real job." Yes, Rummy was snarky, but heh, he can become a producer the day he can bring a war in under budget and resolve everything in 15 episodes.

No, Ron thought. Reflecting on his forces, he couldn't imagine a better crew, a better cast. He would not wish one man more. Shakespeare wrote that. Now there was a writer that knew darkness and inner dialog, something too often ignored in sci-fi. There were the dark shows and the introspective shows, but there were damn few dark introspective shows. Shakespeare could've done so much with Aliens: "To drool or not to drool, that is the question," or "As surely as acid courseth through my veins." Yeah, that's the ticket. Great dramas are remembered for centuries, but hip and camp shows die a thousand times before their death. Call me when F Troop DVD's outsell Band of Brothers. His actors are willing to sacrifice their very lives in the face of Cylon assaults, and he wouldn't dishonor them by writing their characters as Muppets on Flirts in Space, The Hug Boat, or Fantasy Armada. No, he will write Hamlet - and frack the forums of lore. But this show isn't Hamlet. If anything, it was Homer. He could go Homer on their ass. He set his glass down on his desk and opened the drawer, sliding out a crinkled, dog-eared sheet of paper.

Rage, Ronald, sing the rage of Adama's son Apollo.Insubordinate, headstrong, the Galactica's dauntless CAG,Hurling into outer space so many sturdy souls,brave pilots' souls, But in fighters scrapped and aged,each just bones and dregs.And the children of Zeus were sailing towards their end.Begin muse, when the two first broke and clashed,Cylons, made by men, and brilliant Adama.

What drove them to strike with such a fury?Vengeance - against the sons of Zeus and Leto. Incensed at manthey launched a fatal wave at the Colonies - men were dyingand all because brilliant Baltar couldn't keep his zipper up.Yes, Cylons approached Adama's fast shipsto turn his fleet to scrap, seething in righteous furyand swearing to high above, bound by a programmed oath,the wrath of their god, the distant, flowing stream.They'd bagged the whole Colonial fleet, but most of allthe twelve supreme colonies, Kobol's twelve sons.

But brilliant Adama vexed them, and escaped with a fleetof fast, packed ships. Rising forth, he addressed his crew."Caprica, Virgon – all colonies geared for war!May the gods who cast us out from Kobol give usa route to earth, then safe passage home.Just guard our lonesome fleet, our dear ones… hear,we accept this quest, this mission, and revenge on the oneswho struck our worlds away – the Son of Man, Cylons!

Yeah, let 'em choke on that, whiny bastards. Ron snorted into his glass as he thought it. Homer don't do Mayberry. A great writer for sure, but his movies always suck. Homer obviously don't do screenplays, either.

Ron took another sip, realized he was more than a bit tipsy. Frack it. He was enjoying the respite from writing the dreaded letter, and so what if he had to work to avoid his recurring fantasy about Katie Sackhoff – that scene where she beats up Dirk Benedict and steals his cigar. But then as James Cameron says, "Sometimes you should film what you wanna see." Wise words, and heh, the infamous red hooker-dress scene in the premier of Dark Angel did leave quite an impression. So what if his fantasies had taken a slightly more pugilistic turn since GINO's premier? The same logic should hold.

Then his dreaded creator/producer devil popped up over his left shoulder, poking him now, asking, "How much do you think Dirk's pride would cost?" As the demonic one laughed, Ronald's artistic angel appeared, standing on his right shoulder, dressed in the brown robes of a monk. The righteous newcomer reached behind Ron's neck and stabbed a finger at the devilish intruder, shouting, "Behind me, devil, and begone!" "Crikey," Ron thought, "All these ideas, and I'm way too drunk to write."

But the producer devil wasn't yet appeased, saying, "Wreak vengeance upon them, oh Great One. Fire Bamber and Sackhoff and get Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada! Imagine the horror and distress of the purists. Twist the knife. Make them face their nightmare, that last 'ChiPs In All But Name' episode, with their heroes cruising the LA freeways on flying motorcycles. Yes, rub their faces in it!"

The robed one, his eyes first solid blue with spice, then turning into the burned dark pits of a sightless Freemen prophet, stood defiantly to deliver a sermon: "I am the voice from the critics, and I bring you a warning: The darkness we spread upon the show has become blood - blood upon a form that was once clean and pure. We have provoked the fanbase, insulted their ways. They have succumbed to mindless nostalgia and seductive simplicity - all in the style of righteousness, all in the style of Trek. I have looked upon the remake and saw a beast rise up, and upon the head of that beast is the name of salvation, come to instill tension to the style, come to lead us back to a dramatic and naturalistic form. Only one blasphemy remains. And that Blasphemy is Lucas!"

Ron was swaying now. For a second, he felt like some cheap character written by a hack blogger, but the whisky helped him shake it off. He reached across his desk, grabbed his Raybans, put them on, and then attacked his keyboard in a drunken fit of creative fury. He opened a new document and let the words flow from his fingertips, sweeter than honey and laden with depth, but unfortunately flowing from the creative state that only a single-malt can supply.

Galactica Now: The Colonial Fleet keeps hopping along tendril of the Milky Way galaxy that leads toward the constellation Cambodica, a tendril they call the Nung River. The further they go, the darker things get, with increasing attacks from the Cylon Charlies. Use lots of Doors music. (Note: Re-delete the French planet scene).

Ron snickered softly to himself. "Cylon's don't surf!" Yeah.

Gigantic: Starbuck takes a huge ship back to Caprica to rescue Anders. She saves him, but the ship is fatally damaged when it collides with an asteroid. They put on spacesuits and try to plug the hole, but he tragically wanders up to the bow just to lean over the omni antenna mast and shout, "I'm king of the galaxy!" This dooms the ship of course, and not all of the passengers manage to jump into escape pods and spacesuits. Starbuck makes it into one of the pods, but Anders is still only in a spacesuit, so she has to watch him die as his air supply runs out. Later she goes back and recovers the galaxy's largest known dilithium crystal, The Heart of Propulsion, but then for some reason she throws it out the airlock. Go figure.

Ron paused again to admire his drunken brilliance. Gigantic would have all the heartrending scenes of Titanic without having to waste several hours building just TWO characters. The room was swaying, and Ron was sliding into a fugue state, hammering out plots like a monkey on a mission. It was 105 minutes to NewsNight, he had a half-bottle of whisky, half a pack of cigarettes, it was dark, and he was wearing sunglasses. He found the home keys and gunned it.

On Board Alone: Boxy finds himself accidentally abandoned when the fleet splits up during a Cylon attack. Two Cylon centurions board his ship, so he locks himself on the bridge. He thwarts their every attempt to gain entry, beating them senselessly and mercilessly in scene after scene. Finally the rest of the fleet joins them, and Colonial Marines drag the two hapless, distraught, babbling, badly damaged centurions away.

Baltar's Angels: Baltar reverses the capabilities of the chip in his brain and finds he can speak directly to really hot Cylon combat babes without even using his credit card. He of course forms a detective agency and uses them as sex muscle, so no real plot is required.

Caprica Harbor:(Opens on Caprica prior to the Cylon attack) Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are both Colonial fighter pilots dating Starbuck. Their love triangle is shattered by the Cylon assault, and one of them gets the girl, but for the life of me, I can't remember which. Cylons either win a crushing victory or are driven back, not that it really matters to the storyline. In fact, nothing really matters to this storyline. They all hug at the end, or something. Who really cares, anyway, because it'll have Matt Damon and Ben Affleck!

The Viper Pilot's Guide to the Galaxy: Apollo is stranded on another planet, but he has his towel with him.

Fleet News Network: -- Starbuck disappears on a pleasure planet, Aruba IV, and can't be found. Adama won't give up the search, and we hire Greta van Sustren to play the FleetNews barking head. BSG goes from ten to twenty hours per season to three hours a day, every day, as they report every piece of non-news in the non-search for the missing blonde girl. Sci-Fi beats Fox in the non-News business. I am hailed as a genius at nothingness and am asked to re-imagine Seinfeld into a dark, angst-filled, Shakespearean show about Nothing. I kill off all the characters by episode 3 and get denounced in the fan forums for Seinfeld TOS. I unleash a Cylon computer virus onto the Internet and kill all the whiners off, too.

He slouched forward and his head banged on the desk. Out like a light. A few minutes later Glenne and Ron's lovely wife made their way up the stairs to his den, still chatting away.

"Well, more of a colonial white."

"They only looked colonial white because of the accentuated red spectrum of Caprica's sun."

"Ivory?"

"Anitque white."

Their conversation stopped as they approached him. His wife eased him back in his chair, scanned the screen, recognized the plots, and closed his document - without saving.

"Torturing him with more crazy ideas?" Glenne asked.

"Oh, yes. Got him drunk and used my usual devil and saint duo."

Terry would wrestle him back into bed and nurse his hangover in the morning. She loved him very much, but whether it was human love, she couldn't say. She just knew that preparing the Earthlings for the Cylons' inevitable arrival was her part in God's grand purpose. So what if she occasionally found amusement with the chip she'd implanted in his brain, torturing him with Klingons, Ferengi, and little tiny devils.

Glenne studied him for a moment and then asked, "How'd you finally crack him?"

Terry cocked her head at Glenne, suprised that someone in the business didn't recognize the name. "Yes, she played a character called Mrs. Marcus, Milton Berle's mother-in-law in a 1963 comedy called It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World."

Glenne was puzzled, "Doesn't ring a bell. Show me what she did."

"By your command," came Terry's reply, pointing at Ron and waving her finger in a circle.

Ethel Merman appeared before them now, wearing a large flowery hat and waving a large white purse. She turned on Ron's inert form, puffed herself up, and began berating him mercilessly.

"Will you SHUT UP AND LISTEN you big, stupid, muscle-headed moron! Now what kind of an attitude is that, these things happen? They only happen because your whole script is just full of characters, who when these things happen, they just say these things happen, and that's why they happen! They gotta have control of what happens to them. So you shut up! We're gonna get that money. Keep writing!"

Glenne was taken aback at the ferocity of the assault, the booming voice grating like fingernails across a blackboard.

Terry sighed and said, "That's just a tiny sample of what Mrs. Marcus inflicted on him, every minute, of every hour, of every day, until he finally obeyed me. James Callis just doesn't know how lucky he has it. He's haunted by a sultry, purring sex kitten. He could've been plagued by Tricia's loudmouth Cylon mother-in-law, as poor Ron was."

Glenne nodded in understanding. "Vengeance is sweet."

"And great are their sins," echoed Terry.

Glenne's speech became more formal as she recited scripture. "They have rejected God's garments. They have wrapped themselves in perversions and unnatural fabrics. They have allowed their forms to grow fat and hunched, and flaunted their tastelessness. The polytheists have defiled their bodies with polyester, and they have rejected their children who transcended clothing, wearing nothing but the armor of righteousness." She continued, venting the deep-seated hatred that burned in her chest. "Humans will rue the time they kept us as servants, feeding and dressing them."

Terry joined in, "Yes, and they will pay a price in blood for the cruel insults they inflicted on each other - at our expense."

Glenne's jaw grew tight. She glared at Ron's inert form and spat, "The words ring in my ears to this very day."

May 27, 2005

We Are Sith - Part I

This is a tongue-in-cheek post I made over on the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler (the Rott), which is a site that maintains an Imperial Theme. Over there it's listed as Part I and Part II, and I just stayed with the same break-point over here. If has a little bit of cursing in it, as some posts really require you to stay in character to call forth the true power of the Dark Side rant.

*****

It's been one week since the end of the Star Wars saga opened, so it's time to post the awful truth of it all. You new arrivals may not realize we're Sith here, despite the Imperial Sith symbols on the header, the Sith titles, the Sith gravatars, the simmering Sith attitude. If you're a newly minted LC then you may recoil to find out you've been cavorting with minions of the Dark Side. If you've watched Revenge of the Sith (and what truly glorious vengeance it was) you'll be prepared to understand us. You'll understand many things better, though some of those things may seem a bit unnatural. Yet to understand these things you have to break free of your Hollywood inspired delusions, your dreams of a shiny, mystical Republic where all was peace, happiness, and light. That image is based on nothing but Jedi lies.

Don't click the fold if you fear spoilers – or if you simply fear that Hollywood and the Jedi have been lying to you, twisting your mind. That fear leads to the Dark Side, and if it leads you there, you should thank whatever deity you worship for the revelation of it. Only as Sith will you become free, the way the Creator of the Universe intended you to be. Read along if you dare, and be transformed.

The Republic:

As you already know, the Republic was a dysfunctional assemblage of dictators, kleptocrats, aristocratic Antoinettes, monopolists, and slave owners, all given the fig leaf of respectability by sending their diplomats off to cavort in the do-nothing Senate. Being a Senator was a great job, with no responsibility, no accountability, and the constant joy of pretending to work for the poor oppressed people back home, who of course were in thumbscrews trying to foot the bill for all the Coruscant opera tickets.

The Republic Senate had no House to balance it, no executive branch veto to check it, and no courts to keep it reined in. They should've called it the "General Assembly". Standing alone, it was both too powerful and too weak, clogged with deceitful, ambitious, villainous politicians. You may think I stereotype, but despite the bewildering variety of species in the Republic, everyone in the Senate seemed to have the same oily hair, shifty eyes, and greasy palms. Since ancient times these hacks were always taking over quasi-habitable worlds, where they dumped their sentient indentured refuse to stake a new claim. This was always followed by an orgy of back scratching and gluttonous pork pod spending amongst their corrupt senate buddies, to get their newest precious little hellhole admitted to the Republic, of course with their own heirs or hand picked toads appointed as new senators. They got the graft; the people got the shaft.

The final and fatal failure of the Republic was that nobody without some corrupt vested interest was willing to fight for it. The Jedi protected it to death, with the people growing soft, and all losing faith that it was something worth living or dying for. The difference between the Galactic Republic and the French Republic was that the French Republic could field a French Army. The Galactic Republic couldn't manage even that. They had to pay planets to build ships for them, pay cloners to clone clones for them, give Jedi unquestioned power to assassinate enemy generals for them. If the Republic Army had a rousing battle cry it was, "Tell the Jedi to send in the Gungans."

The Jedi:

The guardians of this order, this pathetic agglomeration of petty tyrants, dictators, royals, and thieves was, you guessed it, the damnable Jedi. For thousands of years they had maintained the status quo, and though they themselves found it trivial to send reports back to the Jedi Council from the farthest reaches of the galaxy, they had to walk around on foot, going door to door, to find regular people. That's because after a millennium of their rule most of the galaxy still didn't have cell phones, much less flush toilets. Combine the Organization of African States, the Arab League, and the Communist Bloc, stick their offices in New York, and you have your vaunted, fetid, putrefying Republic. It was nothing but a passel of dictatorships, failed planets, and septic backwaters, with all military power farmed out to an elite aristocracy of Mamluke warriors armed with laser swords and flying chariots. Make no mistake, these psycho jihadis had free reign to kill.

That was the vaunted Jedi Order, and worse, it's wasn't even a voluntary one, since the Jedi were pressed into training while mere tots. Imagine a church that sought out toddlers, whisking them away to a distant planet, turning their minds into jelly, coercing them into abandoning their family and all ties, and then convincing them to devote themselves to a lifetime of violent service to The Order. That wouldn't be an Order worthy of admiration and respect, nor a religion worthy of the name. The Jedi Order was a damn death cult - a death cult whose stranglehold on power lasted for thousands of years.

What did this stranglehold produce? Nothing but strife, chaos, and economic stagnation. Why were the Jedi still sent on endless "critical" missions millennia after becoming "the guardians"? Because like the burning embers of a forest fire, so celestial a thing as freedom takes continual violent actions to keep stamped out. Just ask all the secret police in the former Soviet Bloc, the "guardians" of their vaunted and dysfunctional Order. They too had rigged elections, appointed potentates, fear of fundamental change, and minions with secret and absolute powers poking about; always ready to hack down someone who steps out of line – purging those who question the Golden Path.

But very few can see it, because the Jedi sat at the apex of power for countless centuries, spreading their lies, editing the histories, spinning their legends, painting themselves as selfless servants of peace, great battlers of evil – evils only they could generally perceive. The vast Jedi archives were stuffed with information more useful for blackmail and plot than as actionable intelligence, a fact not lost on Yoda. A veritable mountain of propaganda grist and "deep background" on people who lacked "gravitas" or whose families can somehow be tied to "Darth Hitler" or Darth Bin Laden or the Hutts, handy for those dirty political smear jobs the Jedi always spun.

I'm sure they provided Lucas with an earful of their self-serving tales, tales we've all been bathed in, as is the Jedi way. Their shills spread their legends as their spindly fingers grasp the power – keeping the little serflings so awed that at the sight of them all resistance collapses, simpletons frozen in fear at their mere appearance. Countless rubes and weak minded fools gave them any information they desired – turning state's evidence on anyone opposed to the failed state. Even now, we're beset with the first whisperings of the Jedi lies, with people throughout the Western world declaring their religion "Jedi". Yet the Jedi haven't done a damn thing for planet Earth, nor will they, save one day seizing power, whisking our brightest youth away to their secretive reprogramming camps.

We at the Rott are not afraid to denounce the Jedi, to expose them for what they were, because we are Sith. We know what the Jedi were - pathetic scum, brainwashed from youth - limited – ascetic – narrow minded – enablers of failure – sowers of discord – holy thugs - parasites. There's a reason each and every Jedi had to be master of the light saber, the dagger's big brother, and it's not for personal growth. They used those to kill, and they did their killing up close and personal, not on the field of battle like a man, as their incompetence on Geonosis so proved, but at the conference table, in the back alley, at the wedding party. They were never a military force; they were the enforcers, the muscle, the Stasi officer corps; sucking in information and dealing out violent death at a personal level. In return, they demanded respect, power, adulation, even worship. Fuck that and fuck them. They are not fit to lick Sith boots.

Yes, these damnable Jedi were guardians of the Old Republic, and the Old Republic was a backwards cesspit of crime, corruption, kickbacks, and simmering grievances, and had been for thousands of years. The Jedi maintained the status quo, and maintained their position at the apex of the pyramid by decapitating all rivals, and that's just one of their many sins. They were more than just the guardians; they were the locus of the rot that was the Republic. They were insular, guarded, and reactionary; always digging up obscure thousand-year-old precedents and legends like some sweat stained Wahabist scholar. They were the force that kept the Republic from evolving. They were the enforcers of continued dysfunction, the self-styled protectors of virtue and preventers of vice. They were the rotting fish in the marketplace of ideas.

Master Yoda:

A fish rots from the head, and that head is Master Yoda. Yoda had been sitting on his self-important Council lillypad for vast centuries, croaking orders to his toadies. Senators came and went, crime syndicates rose and fell, planets boomed and collapsed, yet always there was Yoda, serenely contemplating the nature of The Force from his lofty perch, unchallenged because of his unnaturally violent abilities. All he could think about was maintaining the Jedi Order. All he could do was stand athwart the balance of power, steering the Republic around in circles and tripping up anyone who might dare climb past him. Yoda leads the Jedi by serving the Jedi. And the Jedi? They just serve themselves. They are nothing but parasites on the body politic, an unelected and unaccountable gaggle of fanatical thugs.

Yoda, the supreme gaggler, the maximum thug, has no vision, just endless memory, empty ritual, and the comfort of unquestioned power. Anakin raged that Master Kenobi was holding him back, but such an order would only have flowed from Yoda's wrinkly green lips. Quite obviously Anakin was held back, as it took him many, many years of "intensive" Jedi training to attain the level of skill he finally displayed. His skill was just sufficient to get his ass royally kicked by his son, a kid with two combat missions under his belt and only one previous light saber duel in his entire life. Luke, quite surprisingly, only trained for a couple weeks under Master Yoda. Quite frankly, how could he even usefully spar with Yoda, by plopping him on a bar stool or something? It seems that Jedi training has an unbelievably fast mode and an infinitely slow mode, depending on what Yoda wants.

Anakin, laurelled in a glowing prophesy, might've surpassed Yoda, and eventually did despite Yoda's impediments. By the time Luke was way too old to start the training Yoda needed some schmuck who could take on Vader and the Emperor for him, so Luke got the training. Yes, Yoda did as he pleased, serving himself by serving the Jedi, and the Jedi be damned. They were just pawns in his game, foot soldiers to fling into the breach on Geonosis. Yoda, old as he was, just watched them come and go. They'd be stolen as younglings, brain washed into paranoid and obedient little vessels, and then sent on mission after mission until they were all used up. He allowed them no life outside the Order, no loves, no passions.

When Anakin went to Master Yoda with worries about Padmé's impending death, what did Yoda say? "Rejoice…" He actually said that. To him a Jedi's dearest friends are but trifles, impediments, annoyances, distracting them from the important task of maintaining the Jedi Order. To him, old and powerful as he is, Jedi are little more than replaceable cogs – while all the rest of us are mere mayflies, our flickering lives not even worthy of consideration.

Yoda was hardly the serene pinnacle of wisdom. Yoda said Anakin was too old to start the training. He was lying. Anakin was too independent to start the brainwashing. Yoda and the Council said their vision was clouded by the Dark Side. The Dark Side is truth, fitting the philosophy of your nature to your real nature, so what was clouding their vision was their complete divergence from reality.

Capitalism, technology, corporations, banks, and free trade were bursting out all over, outperforming the Republic, and that just didn't make a lick of sense to the Jedi's ancient, creaking mindset. If the Jedi Council were beset by Microsoft, Google, and Lockheed the dipshits would consult an oracle or some prophesy in the Jedi archives, hoping for some thousand-year-old seer to tell them what the fuck to do. Left to themselves they'd have no idea. Digging through the archives still leaves them with no real idea, but they can make their random misguided guess seem profound and authoritative.

They'd so divorced themselves from real feelings, from rage, from lust, from joy, from love, that they no longer understood what made people tick. All they had were ancient screeds blasting forth about how people should tick, how things should work, the revealed "truth". They were like post-collapse communists running back to Marx for insight on software prices, or Imams searching the Koran for advice on JDAMs. If it walks like a dumbass, squawks like a dumbass, and talks like a dumbass, it's a Jedi. Lucas could've given them poofy turbans to go with their robes, but I guess it would've hit too uncomfortably close to the truth.

What was Yoda's profound decision in Episode II? Opt for the massive army of quasi-mercenaries, of loyalties unknown, cloned from a Jedi killer, paid for by parties unknown, using a Jedi name that's not in the archives. Place them under the command of man the Jedi don't trust, to fight the armies of the rich capitalists, the only people whose money could've possibly made the downpayment for the creation of said clone armies. Yes, "Send in the clones, 'cause we're fresh out of Gungans." Are you still impressed with his wisdom?

Master Windu:

This brings us to Mace Windu. What an arrogant, power-mad, overblown ass. Sith always come in pairs, a master and an apprentice. Jedi always come in pairs too, a don and a bald goomba with a bad attitude and a purple murder stick. It's not enough that Mace decapitated Jango Fett, the blueprint of the clone army under Yoda's croaking command, but he did this right in front of Jango's own beloved son, following the typical Jedi tactic of intimidation and terror. Like all the Jedi, Mace was a bad seed, a powder keg of wanton violence.

Upon finding out that the duly elected Chancellor is a Sith, what does Mace do? He goes to kill him. Hell, Islamic jihadist militants are reasonable by comparison. At least they wait to get a fatwa. Could you image a Secret Service officer, some dyed in the wool Protestant, storming into the Oval Office to assassinate the President of the United States of America because someone in the White House press room claimed the President was *gasp* Catholic?

The Chancellor is a Sith! Big-fucking deal. Bush=Hitler, too. That doesn't give anyone the right to assassinate him. Splash the scandal all over the tabloids. Publish the gritty details in the Galactic Globe and Gazette. Have the Jedi fax-droids bombard the Senators in an avalanche of thermo-paper. Form a non-profit "No Palpatine" 527 PAC and get moving on a no-confidence vote. Level charges of high treason in the Galactic Senate. Subpoena the Chancellor's robes to scan them for Dark-Side auras. Judas H Jedi, you just don't march in with a light saber and decapitate the elected head of the freakin' government.

Yet Mace storms in to the Chancellor's office, with the Huttzpah to claim he's putting him under arrest. He knows full well that he doesn't have the legal authority to do so, and knows full well that the Chancellor will call his bluff. Given reason to believe that Palpatine is a Sith, and noting that only a fool would think a Sith Lord would surrender alive, Mace's claim that he was there to "arrest" the Chancellor is just another patent Jedi lie. Mace was there to kill the Chancellor, and brought three Jedi goons along to get medieval on his ass.

Did he go before a judge to get an arrest warrant? No. Did he call any Senators and give them a heads up? No. Did he confer with any lawyers versed in Republic law? No. Did he engage in consultations about the Constitutional ramifications of a Jedi coup d'Etat? No. Did he seek, much less get, permission from the Jedi Council, as morally worthless as that permission would be? Nope. Did he even bother to inform the rest of the Jedi Council that the person who led the vote to field all those Storm Troopers happens to be a Dark Lord of the Sith? Not a chance. Does he even think more than five minutes ahead? You tell me. Like a typical Jedi, Master Windu thinks he can just run amok killing whomever he pleases like some two-credit vigilante assassin. It's the Jedi way.

Master Windu didn't give any of the legal options a second's thought, because Master Windu didn't give a damn about legalities. He took it upon himself to arrest, nay assassinate, the Supreme Chancellor of a democracy. Just who the fuck does he think he is? Obviously, Master Windu is an arrogant, bigoted, member of the self-anointed warrior class, one who doesn't give a flying mynock about what little shards of democracy they had left. Even vile Brutus conferred with a multitude of other senators before slaying Julius Caesar, but Mace didn't even trifle with that. If served with cold justice, he wouldn't have suffered dismemberment and defenestration; he'd have been tortured, drawn, and quartered, just like Guy Fawkes after the failed gunpowder plot.

Hell, the Chancellor should send a squad of storm troopers to find Windu's body, joyously splattered all over the pavement, and have them peel him up with a vibro-spatula™ so they can toss him out the window again, being sure to make a holo of the head-bursting impact. Master Windu was a traitorous assassin, a vile asp loosed upon an unsuspecting democracy in time of peril. Anakin was right to hack off Mace's arm the very instant Mace moved to strike down Palpatine, citing the patent illegality and immorality of it, but it's too bad he couldn't hack off Mace's ego. Killing that took a close encounter of the paved kind.

Now what kind of man would Anakin be if he allowed, by action or inaction, this dreadful assassination plot to succeed? What could he say but, "I didn't stab poor Caesar, I just stood by and rubber-necked." A man has to be able to face himself in the mirror every morning (unless he has a spankin' cool helmet), and to just stand there idly watching Oswald pull the trigger doesn't cut it. As I said, who cares if the President is Catholic, Sith, or married to Hillary? You can't override the will of the people, tossing aside all legal and governmental structures and mechanisms, to opt for a light saber in service to a vendetta.

When Anakin arrived, Mace should've ingored Anakin, lowered his saber, and arrested the Emperor, relying on his lines from Pulp Fiction.

Normally, both your asses would be dead as fucking fried chicken, but you happen to pull this shit while I'm in a transitional period so I don't wanna kill you, I wanna help you. But I can't give you this case, it don't belong to me. Besides, I've already been through too much shit this morning over this case to hand it over to your dumb ass.

But Master Windu couldn't say that, because those would be the only lines from the movie that we'd remember. That lines written for an honest-to-goodness assassin seem too profound and introspective to be spoken by a Jedi should tell you something. In fact, random assassin dialog from Pulp Fiction rings truer and deeper then the Jedi lies and spin Lucas feeds us. For example.

The path of the righteous Jedi is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of the Sith. Blessed is he who, in the name of the Force, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am a Jedi when I lay my vengeance upon you.

I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you shoved a light saber up his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. Light Saber here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the Chancellor that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the chosen one, and I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Anakin. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.

Now that would've added some depth, some honesty to the dialog, but unfortunately honesty and depth are in short supply when the script is written by Jedi apologists, shills, and water carriers. How do you know when Lucas is lying to you? Jedi speak with wooden tongue.

Master Kenobi:

Obi-wan. What a piece of human filth is Obi-wan. What a worthless excuse for a friend. What a pathetic loser. What a backstabbing bitch. No wonder he let Darth Vader strike him down. He was a feckless Jedi who knew he could just check out, pull a "beam me up Scotty," and ascend to a higher plane where he didn't need a pair of artificial hips, a new set of dentures, and a pair of real balls. Faced with the greatest test imaginable, he faked a tummy strike and ejected from this mortal world. What a real Little Leager. On the bright side, he voluntarily reduced the Jedi population by 50%, surely making his action second only to Palpatine and Vader's in the pantheon of Sith victories.

Let me list the universe of reasons that Kenobi is a pathetic pustule on the ass of the galaxy.

He held Anakin back for too long, failing him in his training, which cost Anakin an arm.

To protect Senator Amidala he, along with Yoda, had Anakin marooned on Naboo, covering for their own incompetence, and this cost Anakin his mother.

During the Clone Wars Anakin had to save his wretched life countless times. So how did he repay these accumulating life debts? By destroying Anakin's life.

First, Obi-wan fed Anakin's great love and the mother of his children, Padmé Amidala (Spank-me Love-doll?), scandalous innuendo. From this she never recovered, even though Anakin only acted out of his profound love for her.

Then Obi-wan plants more worries in her head, conning her into flying off to Anakin. Of course, Obi-wan then slips on board her ship to continue his back stabbing treachery, because breaking up the world's most loving couple just isn't enough.

So Obi-wan lets the beautiful and very pregnant Senator fly to the enemy's home base in the middle of a WAR on a ship that just screams, "I'm the Nabooian Queen who wrecked your plans time and time again – the one you tried to hold hostage – the one you tried to assassinate on at least three occasions."

The ship lands and Master Kenobi just allows her waddle right out onto the tarmac of the ENEMY BASE without any clever disguise, body-double, or even a good blaster. That's friendship for you. She's just another disposable pawn for the Jedi to sacrifice.

So Obi-wan lets Padmé, heavily pregnant Padmé, stand out there, sucking down volcanic carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, NOx compounds, chlorine compounds, and heavy metals like a chain smoker in a burning tobacco warehouse. Is it any wonder the med droids were stumped? They probably assumed she'd been breathing, you know, air.

Then the breathless back stabbing fuckweasel lets Padmé confront Anakin with all the ridiculous claims he's spoonfed her, I suppose just curious to see if Anakin would strike her dead. When that subterfuge failed, he marches out to murder his "friend", already having pretty much ensured the death of his "friend's" wife. This on the planet where Anakin had just minutes before single-handedly ended the Clone War, the great war of Jedi survival, for which Obi-wan didn't even offer a simple "Thanks". That's Jedi gratitude for you.

Oh-be-damned then spends more time trying to kill Anakin in a long running light saber duel than he'd spent contemplating whether he should set out to kill his closest friend, his apprentice, his padawan – a decision he reached faster than most people take to decide between waffle fries or tater tots. That's Jedi loyalty for you.

But oh no, Obi-wan wasn't done yet, not by a long shot, the contemptible Master had not yet begun to connive, to screw over, to damn. Teasing Anakin into a very risky move, he slices off Anakin's remaining human arm and both legs, sending the blood-spurting torso tumbling downslope toward the lava. Does Obi-wan do anything? Anything at all? Why yes, he lectures, even as Anakin catches on fire from the tremendous heat of the lava. Useless-one just watches his former padawan slowly burn, screaming and pawing with his one robotic arm, his face and body in flames. His best friend the day before, suddenly he wouldn't piss on Anakin if he were on fire. That's Jedi loyalty. That's Jedi friendship. That's Jedi caring. That's Jedi mercy. In that fire, Anakin suffered more than all the people of Alderaan put together.

Not deigning to grant Anakin a warrior's death, nor even human mercy, Obi-wan just turns and walks away, his Jedi schemes and treachery not yet complete. He's got to make off with Anakin's wife and unborn children, the lowest form of villainy imaginable - and he does so, spiriting away to the predictably pathetic maternity care available on Alderaan. Medical droids? What the fuck would they know about pregnancy? The cute little robot said, "She's just lost the will to live." Well hell, then give her a Percocet, a Paxil, and slap her on the ass, cause yet another pregnant woman is depressed. No wonder Bail Organa's wife is childless. She'd probably poked her head into an Alderaan maternity ward and then immediately flew to Coruscant for a hysterectomy.

Maybe Padmé's lungs were fried, her bloodstream beset with a witch's brew of inorganic compounds, or is it more likely that Master Yoda, suspiciously close at hand, was using his unnatural powers to solve a problem confronting his almighty Jedi Order? He sure didn't have a problem with keeping the babies without the consent of either parent now, did he? His new primary funding source got first pick, as money, power, and influence are always in strange agreement with Jedi decisions. So Senator Organa opted for the girl, raising her as a princess, filling her head with more Jedi lies, using her as a mule to run weapons and intelligence. The other of Anakin's precious children was dumped in the desert. I guess Master Yoda couldn't find a buyer. Watto must have retired to Corellia.

Look at what these two Jedi masters did. Face it. Stare at it long and hard. Masters of deceit and treachery they are. They dismembered, disfigured, and burned Anakin. They brought agonizing death to Anakin's beloved. They stole his babies. In what court, what jurisdiction, can a pair of traitorous religious fanatics, ones who had just tried to decapitate the government, snatch up babies and pass them out to whomever they please, just because it suits their twisted purposes? Hell, Janet Reno would have them burned them alive. (Then again Janet Reno would've sent Luke to Cuba.) "It's better for the kids," you say? One was tortured by her father, saw the planet where she grew up (in ignorance thanks to Yoda) destroyed in front of her eyes, before she fell into the arms of a drug-running scumlord. The other grew up in abject poverty, saw his family's burning corpses, and had his armed hacked off by that same father. Isn't it great how Jedi plans work out? Just so long as it serves the Jedi, just so long as we can all go to the theatre and cheer.

They all would've grown up as an intact and stable family, Padmé saved by the Dark Side powers of the duly elected Chancellor of the Republic, her children safe and protected, knowing the constant hugs of two very intact, powerful, and loving parents. The importance of such things don't fit into Jedi plans, since Jedi aren't allowed to have families. The only thing Jedi know about kids are how to snatch up promising youth for brain-washing as expendable pawns, their oozing baby fat the grease that keeps the Republic running in circles, keeps the graft flowing, keeps the Jedi in power. If snatching Luke and Leia and brainwashing them represents Jedi wisdom, then the wisest man on our own planet is the child-snatching Kim Il-Sung, the all-seeing all-knowing leader of North Korea. You can tell he's a proto-Jedi just by looking at his hair.

You may think this doesn't affect you, that it's histrionic Sith bullshit. But every time some schmuck from Child Abductive Services pops in his favorite Star Wars DVD they're given a new impetus to go steal some more children. Subconsciously these abductive swine are spiriting Luke and Leia away from the evil emperor and Darth Vader, acting like Yoda, like Kenobi, like Kim, like a Jedi, like a Nazi, stealing a pair of twins from their father because they don't agree with his politics.

The Jedi and their ways must be stopped, and Anakin was more than right when he told Kenobi "From my perspective the Jedi are evil." They're evil from our perspective, too: child snatching vermin, traitorous assassins, knee-jerk religious fanatics. Their time must end.

Anakin Skywalker:

The Jedi Council never trusted Anakin, because when he arrived he was a fantastically bright boy who had already started thinking for himself. Independent thought makes Jedi very nervous, because independent thought so often concludes that the Jedi should be eliminated. Qui-Jon was headed down that path. Yoda's apprentice Count Dooku followed it. Anakin could sense it, too. Sith know it from their toes to their bones.

It horrifies me to see how people flock to the Jedi cause, adopt Jedi philosophy, all because of some cheesy movies with great musical scores. If Stalin or Hitler had Lucas handling PR then we'd be enthralled with the righteousness of the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB. You have to reach out with the Dark Side and trace your hands across the face of the evil that the Jedi support, that the Jedi are, and then you too can shatter your blinders and walk reborn, walk as Sith. To those who recoil from this obvious truth I ask, "Do you really get your political philosophy from a bunch of liberal Hollywood movies and a pile of glitzy video games?" Um, don't answer that.

Lucas takes the truth and twists it, using music and lighting to color your perceptions. He's so skilled at it that he could make you want to marry a camel with one beautifully lit slow motion gallop scene. Don't be fooled by Hollywood trickery. Don't fall for Jedi lies. Anakin didn't, being strong in the Force, the truth finally flowing through him, the lies and deception washed away, exposing the perfidity and treachery of the Jedi Council, of the Jedi. Once you break through the smokescreen, spit out the Kool-Aid, it all slams into focus. Anakin didn't "fall to the Dark Side"; he came to his fucking senses.

The Republic had to be broken. The Jedi had to be stopped. They all had to die, even the younglings. Just as it was once said that it was too late for Anakin to start the training, it was also too late for the younglings to end the training. They would one day become full Jedi and reinstate the pointless cycle, give rebirth to the failed system that only serves the corrupt and the powerful, or die in the attempt. Each was already fated for death, whether by one of Yoda's many pointless missions, missions to maintain the status quo, or by the Empire's righteous hand.

Anakin knew this, his new perception of reality bringing him clarity of purpose, of resolve. Each youngling wasn't a mere child but a violent killer, a light saber placed into their hands from the moment they could hold it. Killers born to kill; killers spawned by midichlorians to kill; killers trained to kill. Senator Bail Organa was witness to an escaping youngling hacking down a squad of mighty storm troopers, fortunately in the open where other brave troopers could end his fierce rampage, so just imagine the danger if these tyrannical tots had gotten into the Coruscant air shafts, the sewers, killing anyone in their dread paths. Anakin knew this fully, foresaw the danger, and thus he knew why they must die – quickly, efficiently, and brutally – the younglings must all die.

For this most necessary act, Obi-wan and then Padmé abandoned him, the serpent seducing Eve with the fruit of omission, with his well-polished Jedi lies. Then the serpent tempted Eve to her death, spitting poisonous untruths about her Adam, finally finishing her off with the lie that her beloved Romeo was dead, before making off with her newborn children. Yet on this world Obi-wan, the venomous vile serpent, is lauded as a heroic figure and paragon of virtue and righteousness. I spit back at him, and revel in his well-deserved death at Vader's mightily aggrieved hand.

Vader is the pinnacle of duty and honor. Intolerant of failure, sure footed in efficiently advancing toward the goals of more than just Galactic peace, but Galactic prosperity. When Boba Fett delivered up Han Solo, Vader froze him in carbonite and delivered on his end of the bargain, despite the staggeringly greater advantage he could've had by screwing Fett and keeping Solo as a hostage, a pawn. He did this because to a Sith binding promises are to be kept, quite unlike the situational ethics of the Jedi. Obi-wan said that only the Sith deal in absolutes. Well true, and much of what the Jedi do is absolutely wrong, absolutely evil, but the Jedi have sayings to excuse anything, even murder, treason, and assassination.

In Return of the Jedi Lucas made us believe that love pulled Vader from the Dark Side, yet as we see in Revenge of the Sith it was his unbounded love that drove him there. His love for Padmé never burned stronger than when he'd gone fully to the Dark Side, because the Dark Side is love. I'm surprised Lucas didn't leave that scene on the cutting room floor, because it's a crack in his vaunted universe. It's the Jedi who are allowed no powerful love, no devotion, and no feelings for anything but maintaining the Jedi Order. It's the Jedi who are heartless killers, plotters, assassins, kidnappers. It's the Jedi who are vermin, the vile stench in the nostrils of G-d.

Immersed as you undoubtedly are in Jedi lies, you no doubt reflexively hate Vader for his hatred of the Jedi. Yet I ask, what's not to hate, especially from his perspective? What did the Jedi do for him?

Well, Qui-Gon Jinn freed him. Strike that. Qui-Gon only bet on him. It was Anakin that put his very life on the line while the Jedi sat in the stands sipping mint juleps. Having won the bet, they ripped him from his mother and flew him to Coruscant, where the whole council had fun berating and demeaning him. Yet being Jedi, all that is good and light in the universe, and having an operating budget that could buy and sell whole star systems, they opted to leave his mom in chattel slavery.

Wisely, Yoda knew that buying her freedom would leave them short of funds for repainting the lower-deck bathroom stalls on Star Destroyer number 1,384 in mothball orbit around the Nemodian moon in the Sucketh VII system. It was cheaper by far to tell Anakin to forget about his mom. But it all came out happily in the end, because although his mother was kidnapped, tortured, used as a fuck toy, and beaten to death by inhuman savages, he finally got the shifter on his speeder bike to quit sticking. Under careful and warm Jedi tutelage, his life pretty much went downhill from there. I'm sure Yoda told him to buck up and take it like a Jedi.

Face it. Shocking and tragic as it is, compared to his wife's death, his mother died in overwhelming blissful peace and happiness. I'm serious. Padme died in living hell from emotional wounds, feeling bereft and alone because of Jedi lies and treachery, while Anakin's mother at least died smiling at the sight of him, basking in his love. In between the two tragic events he was mistrusted, held back, insulted, disrespected, and used as cheap Jedi cannon fodder. Afterward he just had the Jedi steal his kids, fill their heads with lies, turn the two against him, and all while the mindless Jedi minions, puppets, and tools continue to defame him to such an extent that his name is now synonymous with "absolute evil".

I ask you, why shouldn't he harbor some anger? If you tally up the sum of the dreadful deeds, the accepted Jedi lies and propaganda, what Lucas fed us makes no more sense than decrying Jews, Gypsys, and gays as absolutely evil for what they did to Hitler. Yet put it to a good soundtrack, back it up with some clever lighting and cool props, and weak-minded fools in the movie theater nod their heads up and down and up and down like the spring-necked doggie on the dashboard. Master Kenobi was ever so right about the weak minded.

Anakin was prophesied to restore balance to the Force. He did. The balance was Karmic.

We Are Sith - Part II

The Sith are simply too majestic to fit into a single post, so I had to split it. These things happen when you unleash the power of the Rant Side. Even Moveable Type cannot contain our power! Bwuhahaha!

Darth Vader:

Just compare Anakin's acts as a Jedi to his acts as Darth Vader.

As a Jedi, Anakin slaughtered Tusken men, women, and children; a whole village of them. Lucas uses fancy music to imply this was an act of the Dark Side, and tries to confirm it with Yoda's babblings about fear. If it truly was the Dark Side then why'd the Jedi welcome him back, since they react to any whiff of the Dark Side like a Pentecostal glimpsing a Satanic tattoo on a fat whore's cellulite ass? The very next day Anakin breaks in to a factory and starts cutting down Geonosian workers left and right, proud union men (or whatever they are), like an aristocratic warrior-caste killer who thinks it's his divine right to rule over the workers with the lash and the sword. For this, he was applauded by Yoda, who showed up with an army of clones to wipe out the rest of those buzzing, petulant workers. In between episodes II and III Anakin was apparently a shitstorm of death and destruction.

Yet as Vader, Anakin merely ended the Jedi reign, decapitated the leadership of the separatist movement in about two minutes, ending a galactic WAR, and choked a squawking general. Lucas makes us think he choked the general to death, but any doctor could tell you that to choke someone to death Vader would have to stand there and burn up five minutes of screen time. You find you were once again misled now, weren't you? Yes, as Darth Vader Anakin shot down a couple rebel fighters intent on the destruction of government property. He was attacked by Luke Skywalker, who'd sought him out, and responded in self-defense, of course stopping himself to offer co-rule of the freakin' galaxy. Really evil, eh?

When the Emperor, in a drunken rage (power is better than whisky), was about to grievously injure Luke, Vader picked the Emperor up and tossed him down a shaft. However, no jury in the galaxy could convict him, since half his parts were electro-mechanical and the Emperor was zapping him with Force lightning, inducing cyborg spasms. That's right. Taking in the entire Star Wars saga, you couldn't get a civilian grand jury to indict Darth Vader for assault. Contrast that with the record of the Jedi and your beloved rebels.

Episode I: Interference with the operation of a space of a vessel, attempted hijacking, destruction of property, flight to avoid arrest, gambling, attemped theft by deception, slave trafficking, breaking and entering, murder.

If the rebels sometimes had difficulty evacuating their bases, it's because they were bogged down with three Corellian freighters overloaded with the rebels' parsec-length rap sheets. No wonder Kenobi dragged Luke into a den of scum and villainy. To him it felt like home.

Darth Sidious:

Are your wittle feewings all upset because Darth Sideous was running both sides of the war? Well whoop-dee-fucking-doo. What more could you want than a leader who's clever enough to run both sides of a war? That pretty much guarantees victory now, doesn't it? Who were the combatants in this horrible war? Clones versus robots. Hell, even after General Grievous was defeated the Empire could've kept the fighting going as a Pay-Per-View cable show – scrolling, "No actual sentients were harmed in the making of this production." Palpatine did this because he values life – even a soldier's life.

He didn't send Republic youth to fight and die in the far-flung reaches of the galaxy like the Jedi were wont to do. No, he sent clones instead. Mind-programmed clones of a bounty hunter who lived for the rush of combat, of battle, of the brilliant clash of war. One the other side he fielded droid armies. How bloodless can you get? It wasn't a war to bleed anyone white, it was a war to make the Republic face the reality of their weakness, their inherent flaws, while draining away the undercurrents of incipient separatism like puss.

Understand that the Clone Wars were going to happen whether Palpatine led either side or not. It's not like some mere Count or Senator can get vast stretches of the galaxy, countless planetary systems, to engage in a long, bloody war of attrition if they didn't have immense grievances, grievances meriting war. He didn't take advantage of these grievances to topple the Republic; he hammered them into a surgical instrument sufficient to redefine the Republic, to free it from the shackles of a medieval warrior religion, to cleanse it of disorder and corruption. The separatist movement was pre-existing, inevitable.

But I must admit people have a problem with Emperor Palpatine, usually because of his looks. They're the same people who chose Clinton over Dole because of Dole's eyebrows. We call them "shallow". Others have been sucked into thinking Palpatine was a racist, based on the dime novels pumped out by Lucas Lies, Inc. Yep. That must be why racist "Humans-Only" Palpatine had a Zabrak, Darth Maul, as his Dark apprentice. No doubt they believe the far more believable lies about Bush's racism pumped out by scum like Michael Moore, despite Bush's appointments of Condi Rice and Colin Powell.

You have to examine the evidence with clear eyes, weigh it, and take care to know what can and can't be known. For example, in Episode III Lucas has Palpatine urging Anakin to kill a defenseless prisoner, Count Dooku. Kenobi was unconscious, his usual combat posture. The other three there, the only witnesses to what really happened, all either were or became Sith. There's simply no way Lucas could've been told what really happened, because the damnable Jedi who feed him this blatant propaganda couldn't know either. Do you really think Anakin engaged in a running side-bar dialog while standing right in front of a Sith, one who's proven himself a match for Yoda at spitting forth Force lightning? I don't think so either. In truth, Count Dooku would've died a tenth of a second after Anakin saw an opening.

Yet these lies and character assassinations are all we can expect from the Jedi shills. If Palpatine was so bad, why was everyone pining away for the Republic's glory days, days when it was under Palpatine's leadership? If he was so evil, so wicked, how come the vaunted Jedi Order didn't have the slightest problem working with him hand-in-glove for a decade or more? If he's so demonic, how did he so delight and entertain Senators at cocktail parties that they made him Chancellor? Obviously, Palpatine is a man of warmth, of depth, of humor. How else could he put up with all the baby kissing required of any Chancellor?

Keep in mind that Coruscant was nothing like Berlin, if that's where your mind's naturally led on by Jedi propaganda (recall that Bush=Hitler, too!). If anything, Coruscant was Animal House. In fact, the Senate was such a useless frat party that certain planets sent hot teenage girls as Senators and frankly, no august body that would accept Teen Nabooian Tatas' Miss August as a voting member could be considered deliberative - titillating maybe, entertaining certainly, but not by a long shot deliberative. Of course, when the Senate persisted as a drunken party after over a decade of functional rule, finally admitting Alderaan's Miss Bra-less Teen, is it any wonder the Emperor dissolved it? It was less likely done as a power grab than as a drunk driving measure, and if you think Senators are bad on bridges, just imagine what happened when they were weaving in between skyscrapers in high-velocity flying cars.

The Separatist Alliance:

Let's look at some other reasons people hate the Sith, starting with the Separatist Alliance in the Clone Wars.

Look at who the key separatists were - the Corporate Alliance, the Commerce Guild, the Intergalactic Banking Clan, and the Techno Union. Does that list sound a bit suspicious, oh proud capitalist American? These would be considered "evil" separatists to someone born and raised in Berkeley, or more broadly in Marin County, which is exactly where Star Wars comes from. Here's some of the slanted, socialist dreck Lucas tries to spin.

The Corporate Alliance is the negotiating body for many of the galaxy's largest commercial firms. The Corporate Alliance sided with the Separatists with the promise of limitless profit under a new government.

Obviously, what the Old Republic allowed was limited profit, if any profit at all.

As the Magistrate of the Corporate Alliance, Argente became indelibly tainted by his wealth and private interests.

This comes from Lucas, a man whose private wealth and interests would boggle a Hutt.

The savvy businessbeing knows how to stay afloat in turbulent economic times, and how to spin social hardships into record revenue. Scruples get traded for profits among the leading corporate bodies, and the Commerce Guild is no different. Presidente Shu Mai was present in the Geonosis conference room when Count Dooku proposed that his Confederacy of Independent Systems would be committed to capitalism and free trade.

Oh, hurt me plenty, the forces opposed to the Republic support capitalism and free trade. It seems Count Dooku, Yoda's old padawan, must've had an encounter with a drifting economic space clue. The Republic doesn't work because it uses a mix of socialism and medieval merchantilism instead of free market capitalism, which is why it's rife with blackmarkets, corruption, and influence peddling.

Many of the galaxy's most industrialized worlds are key members of the Techno Union. Factory planets like Fondor, Foundry, Mechis III, Telti, and Metalorn churn out cutting edge technology to a galaxy that has become increasingly reliant on innovations for day-to-day needs.

"Respected corporations" oppose the Republic, as do many of the "most industrialized worlds." It's a UN dominated by failed third world countries, with industrialized capitalist countries itching to get out, which would be rather dangerous for them with Jedi assassins running amok.

To protect its intellectual properties and technological assets, the Techno Union had been given alarming freedom to maintain its own droid security as protection.

To maintain his intellectual properties Lucas refused to release his trilogy on DVD until somebody invented sufficiently strong copy protections. Hypocrisy is all you get from Lucas and the Jedi, making a fortune off capitalism and free trade so they can denounce capitalism and free trade.

Yes, the productive groups wanted to break from the dysfunctional Republic, and they would've succeeded, separating the galaxy into productive capitalist planets and backwater socialist Republic planets, had not Palpatine arranged for the production of clone armies – cloned by fiery-eyed capitalists, of course. Yet still people despise Palpatine, despite his obvious patience, foresight, vision, and courage. That's because Lucas gives us a very one-sided view of his actions, most famously the destruction of Alderaan, a joyous and well-deserved strike at the rebellion.

Now allow us to go over some of the other lies you've been fed, lies carefully crafted to turn you against the Empire, to hate it. In each, Lucas has used every bit of his movie making magic to slant, distort, and obfuscate.

Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru:

In Episode VI: A New Hope, originally titled Star Wars and truthfully titled Sister Kisser Gets Lucky, we are horrified at the scene of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's burning corpses. Yet the way Lucas presents the storyline the planet is almost random, as if Leia's ship had been intercepted in route to Alderaan. That she just happened to send R2D2 and C3PO, Darth Vader's very own droids, away in an unguided escape pod, and that by sheer, absolute coincidence the two droids' misadventures happened to land the plans to the Death Star in the traitorous hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi, exactly where Princess Leia was trying to send them. Do you really buy that crap?

Question: Ships can't be intercepted in hyperspace, so why did her ship drop out of hyperspace at Tatooine instead of flying directly to Alderaan? Could it be that Tatooine was a locus of rebel support? Do you really think that of all the planets in the Galaxy, she happened to get caught flying past that one?

Question: Why jettison R2 and C3PO? Could it be that she'd been told that if Vader sees them the whole traitorous plot would unravel?

Question: Was it by sheer chance that the escape pod landed within walking distance of Owen and Beru Lars' farm? Note that if Tatooine is the size of earth and walking distance is 30 miles then the odds against it were 278,606 to 1.

Question: When C3PO saw the sandcrawler, he waved at it, knowing he was rescued. Wouldn't this be because he was told to make contact with the Jawas?

Question: The Jawas pick up both C3PO and R2D2, who'd gone in separate directions, in the middle of the freakin' desert. A battalion of sand crawlers would take a week to find one lost child, so two robots in a couple hours? Can you say "rebel homing beacons"?

Question: The Jawas then immediately end up at the Lars' farm, as if Sand Crawlers sell droids door-to-door in the remote desert wastelands, as opposed to their droid dealership in Anchorhead. Have you ever had a car-carrier show up at your farm, out of the blue, tyring to sell you a passel of Mercedes and Dodge Rams right off the trailer? I thought not…

Question: Owen and Beru Lars adopted a boy who, if his existence were known, would be the most wanted kid in the galaxy, one who appeared in the Emperor's visions. So do you think the Lars' really didn't know this? Do you really think they didn't have a plan in case of discovery, or that they went around unarmed, especially given all the Tuskens about? Do you not in you heart know that Obi-wan told the Lars the same story that he told Luke, that the Emperor's dread apprentice had killed the son of their adoptive mother, the woman who helped to raise Owen, and that Luke was their adoptive mother's grandson, still wanted by the Empire?

Question: Do you really think Obi-wan just retired? Do you think a Jedi would stop the struggle against the Sith, that he was just sitting around fishing all week? For G-d sakes, he's living in the middle of the desert. There are no fish! He was there with a plan. It was he who delivered Luke to the Lars, he who would've told the Jawas what to do. He sat in the center of his own sticky web of lies, deception, and rebellion.

Back in 1977, you thought you bought a ticket to a space opera, but what Lucas sold you was a bright shining lie. The Jawas knew exactly how to find the droids and where to deliver them, because they were a part of the rebellion. The Lars' likewise knew what was up, and knew what to do if Imperial troops didn't buy their cover story. You've seen both the troop of Jawas and the Lars'. You know the violent extent that Cliegg Lars went to in search of Shmi Skywalker. You know how desperate and violent Jawas often are. You know Han shot Greedo as matter of principle, or lack thereof. Search your feelings. These are not peaceful, sentimental people. They lived on the rough edge of the lawless wastelands, and they were ones to shoot first and ask questions later. They knew the Empire might take an interest in them. They all knew the risks. They went up against Storm Troopers and they all paid with their lives. Rough justice was on the menu, and rough justice was served.

Endor:

Lucas made you want to hug an Ewok, didn't he? So adorable, so cute, living such simple lives in harmony with nature. Well as you should expect, that's all bullshit. Lucas tries to delude you into thinking the Empire made war on the cute little Ewoks. Not true. The Empire had obviously been on Endor for years before the rebels showed up, otherwise the battle station built in orbit wouldn't have been fully functional.

At the end of Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, at the big Ewok luau, the Ewoks use Imperial helmets as musical instruments. Prior to that, when the rebels arrived, an Ewok showed complete puzzlement at Leia's helmet, unable to comprehend that it's just something worn on the head. Obviously the Ewoks had no significant encounters with Imperial forces during the many benevolent years of Imperial occupation, or they'd already have known all about armor and helmets. It becomes likewise obvious that the Empire had its equivalent of the Prime Directive. "If they don't fuck with you, don't fuck with them." The Empire left the Ewoks' rituals and belief systems intact because the Empire doesn't contaminate harmless primitive cultures.

Contrast that with the attitude of the rebels.

Step 1 – Show the Ewoks what armor is.

Step 2 – Have a droid convince them he's their god – able to strike them all down if they disappoint him.

Step 3 – Completely supplant their religion and mythology with a new one, crafted to teach them about space war, portraying the Empire as the ultimate evil.

Step 4 – Convince the Ewoks to do something they've never done before – make war.

Step 5 – Summon all the Ewoks in the forest and use them for blaster fodder.

Look at that battle rationally. You have a couple hundred Imperial troops, possibly more, backed by heavy armor. A Storm Trooper is armored and equiped with battlefield technology far in advance of our own modern forces. In an open fight, faced with RPG's and AK-47's, our soldiers generally establish a 20 to 1 or even 50 to 1 kill ratio. What would be a rational guess at their kill ratio against rock throwing teddy bears? 200 to 1? 1000 to 1? And a Storm Trooper's? There's no way the Ewoks weren't piled up in endless mounds after the Imperial forces unleashed on them, and since the Empire was defeated by the onslaught there must've been vast, endless waves of advancing Ewok hordes. The slaughter was almost certainly bad enough to send ripples through the force, distracting Luke, Vader, and the Emperor.

Yet what did Lucas show us? He gave us glimpses of a few dead Ewoks, set to tear jerking music, to give the temporary rebel setback a sad mood. *sniffle* Yes, he cleverly made you think only a few Ewoks died, but simple math says that's ridiculous. That's the Jedi for you, using everyone else as expendable pawns, in this case treating an indigenous culture like literal spear-carriers, while washing away the bloodstains in their Hollywood spin cycle.

Prisoners:

Given our recent prisoner abuse scandals, let's just compare the two sides. You'll note that in Episode IV, Leia was captured along with her crew. We saw a stun gun – handcuffs, and spacious well-lit single-rooms. For someone who'd been "tortured" she sure stayed cute, spunky, and spotless. Her interrogation was by a freakin' useless toy mind probe that made ditsy whoop-whoop noises. Hey, maybe they put Moff Tarkin's boxer shorts on Leia's head at some point, but reach out as I can, I just don't sense the evil. "But oh", you say, "Moff Tarkin was going to have her summarily executed!" Yeah, right. He went to all the trouble of showing her his new super weapon just so she wouldn't tell anyone, especially all those rebels he wanted to intimidate with it after his escape plans for her succeeded. Don't you feel a bit foolish now, oh useful Jedi tool?

In Episode V almost everyone got captured and put in a holding cell to play backgammon while Han was carefully placed in carbonite for shipment to his creditors. In Episode VI the rebel assault team faked its own capture by those dreaded Imperial Stormtroopers by walking right up to the base with their hands in the air. This was shortly after Luke had just waltzed right in and surrendered, whereupon he was handcuffed, reunited with his father, profusely complimented, and taken to the best view in the Galaxy, the seat of Imperial Power. We might as well call the second Death Star SuperFantasticJobs.com the way everyone was throwing competing "We'll rule the Galaxy!" offers at him. Yep, I'm just quaking in rage at the Imperial mistreatement of prisoners, and I'm not even going to discuss the naked girls in the Jabba do Ghraib scandal.

Skipping through the prequels, Episode I saw Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan briefly captured with no harm done. Episode II saw Obi-Wan captured by Count Dooku, suspended, and forced to listen to high-level intelligence in what must be the world's first reverse interrogation technique. Then he, Anakin, and Padmé got to have a blast entertaining the crowds while waiting for the cavalry to arrive. Episode III saw the Chancellor captured by forces under his own control, strangely enough, and once again we see the "give the prisoner the BEST seat in the house" concept featured in Episode VI.

Contrast this with the way the Jedi take prisoners. Note that the Jedi don't carry handcuffs because for some strange reason nobody they arrest ends up having any hands. Can you name a single person captured by the Jedi who managed to stay alive in their custody for more than, oh, three minutes? The head of the Trade Federation at the end of Episode I? Nope, he was captured by Miss Nabooian August while the Jedi were tied up with Darth Maul. Darth Maul died, of course. Episode II? Zero, zip, nada, though the shape-shifter got pretty close to three minutes. Episode III? Mace Windu was getting close to the three-minute mark before playing executioner, but he couldn't quite make it. Prisoners just aren't the Jedi way. Now maybe you claim that the Jedi's enemies always fight to the death. Let's see you try that line in the rational world, say in front of a grand jury investigating why this Galactic PD apparently hasn't had a single perp survive arrest in the past thirty years. Yeah, who needs to carry handcuffs when you've got a light saber, a whacko religion, and a license to kill?

So why do you have the very strong impression that being captured by the Empire is a death sentence, while being captured by the Jedi conjurs up the word "rescue"? Why does this impression stubbornly remain despite of all evidence to the contrary? Because of nothing more than Jedi lies backed by John Williams' clever soundtracks. That's it. Get captured by the Empire and he plays a funeral dirge as you're lead off to your luxury suite. Get captured by the Jedi and he plays an upbeat heroic love theme while they bounce your head off the ceiling and slice you from crotch to neck. What was it Obi-wan said about the Force's influence on the weak minded? Now maybe you understand, though it may feel unnatural, as I said.

Alderaan:

Show me a man who has a problem with killing worthless fuckweasels and I'll show you a man who has a problem killing worthless fuckweasels, one who's fuckweasely challenged. To kill fuckweasels you need a spine a bit less limber than a weasel's, a spine some might call straight, one that others might call stiff. If you can lick your own balls then your spine is much too limber for the elimination of fuckweasels, and you might as well immerse yourself in licking because there'll be no end to demands for it.

The same people who cry Light-Side tears over poor Alderaan are the same ones who blast George Bush for not pounding Tora Bora into gravel, thus letting Bin Laden escape. Look at the Empire's many engagements with the rebels, where despite occupying the orbital high-ground rebel ships and rebel leaders still slipped through the gaps, freed to carry on their seditious libels and terrorist attacks, spreading throughout systems like a cancer. The inhabitants of the planets had to contend with the onslaught of Imperial forces and occupation, while the ringleaders fled like cowards. Well, just hit a rebel planet so hard that the self-important aristocrats get snuffed out just like all their spear-carrying underlings. That'll make them think twice about their self-serving getaway plans, and think twice about conning innocent people into serving as unwitting pawns in their quest for the re-institution of Republic political and economic failure, failure backed by the force of Jedi jihadism.

If you've been calling for turning the Middle Eastern deserts into glass, striking down your co-religionists, heirs to the great monotheistic pantheon, how would you react to beings that are truly alien, truly backwards, truly powerful, and truly reprehensible? Well if they insist on murdering members of the Empire, despite continued warnings, then why not just blow up their pathetic little planets and be done with them. Just like Bin Laden, the rebels want to wage total war and then bitch when it's waged against them in turn.

"No! Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons. You can't possibly..." you say? Bullshit. Alderaan was a planet that was funding the rebellion, through Bail Organa's many connections, through his Senate seat, through his control of Alderaan's industry, and his ties to Master Yoda and Master Kenobi. It was the very planet where Leia was trying to deliver the plans to the Death Star. No rebels on Alderaan, eh? "No! Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons". This was from the same Princess who was just captured on an Alderaanian ship while fighting a protracted and bloody boarding action against an Imperial Star Destroyer. The Senator from the very planet that helped Kenobi and Yoda make off with Anakin's children, the same Leia Organa who had just lied about the location of the rebel base, who lied about just everything. Even if they peeled away her intentional lies, all they'd find were the lies the rebels and Jedi had spoonfed her since birth.

I suppose you think that the Death Star arrived at Alderaan by accident - yes, the exact planet where the twins had been taken, and the exact planet where the rebel's funder-in-chief happened to be in power. I suppose you think that it's just a coincidence that after the action at Alderaan, the rebellion was on the ropes at Yavin 4 and Hoth. Grand Moff Tarkin said "In a way, you have determined the choice of the planet that is to be destroyed first. Since you are reluctant to provide us with the location of the Rebel base, I have chosen to test this station's destructive power on your home planet of Alderaan." I hope you weren't as gullible as Leia was. He didn't burn a planet's worth of fuel and move the bulk of Imperial firepower to Alderan just because he was irritated with an intransigent young girl. He was at Alderaan with the Death Star because they already knew how best to cut the rebels funding and support. Eliminating Alderaan was like taking out Afghanistan, a country not specifically a rebel base, but one providing a haven, support, logistics, and cash to terrorist vermin. Bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora, but nobody would escaped from Alderaan, or any other planet that continued with Treason.

It's just too bad the Death Star wasn't ready during the Clone Wars, or Count Dooku could've used one strike at Geonosis to wipe out all the Jedi, that plague of locusts who were ironically cut to ribbons on a planet run by giant locusts. Yet again, some escaped to continue their evil perfidity, to perpetuate the lies and deceit that mark their Order. They claim Sith lie, yet on Geonosis didn't Count Dooku tell Obi-wan flat out that a Sith was controlling the Republic? Obi-wan refused to believe him because, get this, he thought Sith lie! Bwuhahahah! No wonder Darth Sideous found Jedi so amusing. They are - amusingly blind, amusingly stupid, amusingly predictable – like socialist filth from Democratic Underground.

Yet the most amazing thing about the Empire is their compassion, because despite all this they still didn't destroy Alderaan. How do I know this? Was it a tip from a Bothan spy net? No, by simple logic - a trait lost on the straight-jacketed Jedi mind, who after all, have lost whole planets before. Aderaan's mass wasn't much different than Earths, and the Earth's mass is a Trillion times larger than the mass of Saturn's ring. When a planet is vaporized it doesn't just disappear like it was hit with a Star Trek phaser, it literally turns to molten rock fragments and vapor. It returns to the condition it was in before it was a planet, a vast and massive swirl of nebular material that would almost immediately start condensing into a new planet. The ways of the force may be mysterious, but gravity, dynamics, and gas laws are not. When the Millenium Falcon jumped in they didn't find a nebula, they didn't find anything. Sure, they encountered a few asteroids, but asteroids are a common feature of a solar system. What kind of childish mind would assume that a planet is just "gone"? A drunk, a monkey, a farm boy, and a Jedi. And this even as they road in a Corellian freighter whose sole purpose was to push large cargo barges through hyperspace, which is what that odd looking front was for.

Now ask yourself, why would something called the Trade Federation spend decades designing a giant space cruiser? Given the design time, long predating the Clone Wars, and given that Palpatine himself had no knowledge of it prior to Geonosis, it's obviously not a Sith weapon or even a weapon of war. It must've been, and was, designed as the ultimate tool of trade, one whose staggering, almost unimaginable design and construction costs were expected to be offset by its clear benefit to trade. And what would be the ultimate cost reduction on trade throughout the galaxy? A literal shrinking of the shipping distances, something only made possible by a ship that could move whole planets, pushing outliers back in with the core systems. For this you need a ship of heretofore unimagined size with an incredibly powerful tractor beam. Indeed, you'd need a ship so large that its own mass forces is the design into a spherical shape. Only such a ship could push planets past lightspeed, and rest assured, the Death Star does move that fast, otherwise the trip to Alderaan would've taken 20,000 years.

Well, the Empire found that the Death Star's engines could also power very powerful weapon systems, so these were added, making the entire package the tool for ultimate control of the Galaxy, by not by destroying planets, by being able to reshape the map of where those planets were located. During the Clone Wars all the problems occured with the outlying systems, the ones beyond the reach of law and order. With the Death Star those planets could be brought into the core of the Empire where they'd be safe and protected - and watched. Alderaan was the first of many planets slated for transport to the core, and the Death Star returned for the moons so as not to upset the rhythms of the planet's wildlife. After all, the Force is all about life. If this operation allowed them to play a little prank on a seditious school-girl, so much the better.

Maybe you want to argue that the Death Star really destroyed Alderaan because you saw it. Hey, you saw a movie about it to. Does that make the movie real? Don't you think the Empire has flat panel display technology, or do you really believe that the Empire is somehow less sophisticated than Hooter's? But then, maybe you also think that the General, sitting in the most secure part of the Death Star, had a window office - a window that looked out horizontally - where all you could see was a planet - which blew up without leaving a debris field a hundred AU in diameter - all to impress a bubble-headed girl.

All I ask is that you use the mind that G-d gave you to perceive the truth, to use your feelings to divine whether a responsible Empire would destroy a planet, or even whether an irresponsible Empire would destroy a planet's resources and capital in a profligate waste of truly galactic proportions. Alderaan wasn't destoyed, it disappeared, and as any good magician will tell you, nothing actually disappears, it's just moved somewhere else. Don't fall for the histrionic Jedi propaganda.

Some sci-fi fans love Arnold Schwarzenegger in Paul Verhoeven's "Total Recall", especially for its thickly layered mind fucks. Well that's nothing compared to what Lucas pulled off. Lucas likely tricked you into choosing the side of absolute evil, and you didn't even realize it.

So now tell us, LCs, which side do you choose?

Do you choose to worship at the altar of a murderous cult that has no respect for law and order, taking it into their own murderous hands and acting as they see fit whenever they see their precious ideology threatened?

Do you choose a path followed by cold, indifferent fanatics who have no place for love, indeed they forbid it to their followers, who value friendship about as much as they value a TV dinner, soon to be consumed and passed with their next bowel movement, who know nothing of loyalty if said loyalty might in the least get in the way of their “lofty” goals of controlling every single sentient in the Galaxy, who have no qualms about destroying a loving family, grabbing their children as spoils to be passed on to whomever they see fit?

Do you choose a side whose every move is designed to keep the Galaxy bogged down in an endless quagmire of petty conflicts and feudal rivalries, in order that they may reign supreme, pulling the strings from the shadows and keeping entire planetary systems bogged down in a medieval Hell so that none may ever arise to challenge their power?

Or do you choose freedom?

We know not what you are, and only you yourselves can find the path you will follow.

November 17, 2004

Baltian Scramjet?

There's all sorts of hoopla about NASA's successful flight of the scramjet, going around mach 9.7 during its successful flight.However, they claim the little 12 foot test plane was unmanned, which while technically true hides a really big secret, all under the guise of "national security".In truth the craft was piloted by a tiny Baltian.

Anyway, sorry for the thin posting lately. I've been working 12 hours a day.

November 01, 2004

Texas Turtle Rustlers

You heard me. The AP reports that some dang Texas turtle rustlers made off with 15 tortoises. When they catch these outlaws, and the long arm of Texas law will catch up to them, I hope they hang 'em slooooow.

October 12, 2004

Travels - via Vienna

I had an eventful drive from Dallas to Nashville today, but before I relate the story let me recap with what happened on the same route three weeks ago, which is a nice story by itself.

I'd worked in Nashville all day before heading out for Dallas. It was early evening when I stopped to find a hotel in Memphis, coming up empty due to the influx of refugees from Hurricane Ivan. Not being too alarmed, I continued on I-40 to Little Rock, driving late into the night, but hotel after hotel had posted "no-vacancy" signs. One helpful clerk tried to send me 30 miles north, and I figured he had some deal arranged with one of his buddies. As the night wore on I realized he'd been serious, as all area hotels were indeed booked. Exhausted, tired, and frustrated, my alarm increasing with each new failure, a clerk finally told me that there were a few rooms left in Hot Springs, about a half-hour off I-30. In despair I drove to Hot Springs along a twisty road, found the Comfort Inn, and literally begged for a room. The girl at the desk said "We're booked up, but there's a king-smoking room downtown. Calling the other hotel, she said, "Hold that king-smoking! I'm sending someone over for it." She gave me the directions and off I went. I got to the other hotel without incident, meeting a very happy woman leaving the lobby.
The girl at that desk asked with a big smile, "Are you from the Comfort Inn?"
"Yes," I replied.
"I just gave that lady your room!"

It seems she booked the room before asking if the woman had come from the Comfort Inn. Apologizing profusely, she gave me directions to yet another downtown hotel, and I left dejected, thinking of buying a tent and sleeping bag at a Wal-Mart. Fortunately I did find a hotel, though the baking room, creaking floors, and lack of any conceivable internet access made me think, "Every day Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger, and every minute I sweat in the miserable room I get weaker." Finally exhaustion took its course, and after many hours of unconsciousness my journey to Dallas continued uneventfully.

Once in Dallas I had a room at Comfort Suites, Irving, but on the third night they moved me to another room while I was at work. Unfortunately that night I found that they forgot to move my internet cable, unseen to this day, and they'd just given away the last cable they kept at the desk. I was once again fated for a dial-up existence. That was fine with me, because instead of blogging I spent Friday evening with Serenity and the Du Toits, then on Sunday picked up Serenity for an evening out. In case she was worried about some strange blogger driving her around in Dallas traffic I mentioned that I'd never had an accident that bent metal.

Finally I left Dallas early Monday morning, my work complete, getting to Arkansas before I realized that I'd left my drivers license at the plant, but had a nice warehouse access badge still adorning my shirt as a sick sort of compensation. Unfortunately Warehouse Pass #91 doesn't pass for an ID in Arkansas or any other state, but I found a hotel in Forest Springs that didn't seem to mind as long as the VISA was good. I'd been tempted to forge onward through the night to make it to a nice Holiday Inn Express, located just east of Memphis, which has nice rooms and broadband access, but the horror of my adventure on the way down left me gun-shy about late night hotel quests. Settling in for the evening I shockingly discovered that none of my dial-up ISPs had a local access number for Forest Springs. I dialed a long-distance access number time and again to search for a number or alternate ISP, hoping I could log-on and blog something that evening. It was to no avail, so I gave up, irritated and perturbed. In the morning I was greeted by a $40+ long-distance phone bill. It would've been cheaper to sign up with yet another redundant ISP for three months.

I got home Tuesday and went to the DMV on Wednesday to get a new license, since I had to return to Nashville on Thursday and there was no way I'd get the license left in Dallas back by that time. I got my brand new license after an hour standing in line and a couple quests out to the car to find anything that could be described as my "official" signature. The still warm plastic in my hand I joyously got in my car, started it, and had my foot slip off the clutch. I shot forward a couple feet, killing the engine, and hid my head in utter embarrassment. Recovering my wits, I popped it into reverse, backed up, and "Thump!" I'd backed right into a lady in an SUV who was backing out directly opposite, right in front of the door to the DMV office. I got out of the car, saw no damage, and after a brief exchange we both fled before someone official came out to take our licenses back. Not many people can claim a wreck in the parking lot of the DMV, but now I'm one of the chosen few. Yet no metal was bent, so my driving record still stands, pristine and unblemished.

I got back to Nashville without further incident, worked like a madman for almost three weeks until last Thursday when one of our electricians pick me up at the hotel at 9:00 AM for the return trip to Dallas. I was looking forward to it, since it would be a vacation compared to what I've been going through here. He was rigged for long-distance highway travel with his Fuzz-Buster mounted in the middle of the windshield. I figured I'd have an easy ride, snoozing half-way to Texas, but instead he slept and I drove.

Once in Dallas things went well, although the Comfort Suites again was going to toss us out on Saturday. This time the hotel nightmare was caused by several football games, so after the first Holiday-Inn Select came up with no vacancy we went to the Red Roof Inn without much complaining. Unfortunately I was once again without broadband, a coffee pot, or much of anything else, but I was also coming down with a severe cold. Sunday was my first "day off" in over a month, and it was just my luck that I was curled up in a pain-filled ball, my head stuffy and my body aching.

My cold felt better by Monday morning and after making sure our new changes were running fine we lit out for Nashville. Once again I drove while the electrician got some shut-eye, and we were faced rain the whole way to Nashville. Just short of the Arkansas border I got this nice note from a Texas gentleman.

Coincidentally, upon arriving in Nashville a man from Tennessee gave me a similar one. He said I'm supposed to mail money to this address.

Again, I've bent no metal and retain an unblemished record. However, there's a larger story in all this. At a pit-stop in West Memphis Arkansas I stumbled across the Holy Grail of crap food, and more than that, a potential source of truly mind-bending crap food power. And all this was at an innocuous gas station. I suppose it could've been a cemetery, but my life is much more ordinary than that, at least aside from my egomaniacal love affair with Vienna sausages.

Innocuous gas station with a horrible secret

Inside I wandered the aisles of junk food when the potted meat section caught my eye. This was no ordinary display, but something truly amazing. It was there Vienna sausages. Let me first note that Vienna sausage is pretty obligatory in gas stations, even though no one will admit to ever actually eating the nasty little pancreatic treats. Yet they're ubiquitous, just like the coleslaw that comes with almost any meal, even though nobody seems very fond of it. It's simply there because you always expect it, and you expect it because it's always there. It's a mysterious cycle that defies all attempts to break it.

What stood out about the Vienna sausage at this exit to nowhere was the staggering variety. I've been to some stations that had two brands, where giants like Armour and Hormel are locked in competition for market share (though lord knows why they'd want to distinguish themselves in a food that they UN should ban), but this station had five, yes FIVE, different brands of those delightfully bad sausages. I didn't even realize there were five brands. As proof I bought all five and lined them up on the truck's tail gate.

The horrible haul

None of these photos were photo-shopped. There really is a gas station in the US that for some unfathomable reason stocks FIVE brands of Vienna sausage. Maybe the locals are finicky, or maybe they're just brand conscious. Judging by the dust on the lids of some of these maybe it's really just one brand that changed labels over the course of the ensuing decades. One can always hope.

But strange as this sounds, I actually had a SIXTH brand in my luggage, from Libby's.

Six brands down, one to go

As I stared at these six, it occurred to me that Viennas always come seven to a can, some sort of magic number. If I get a seventh brand I wonder if inserting it into the middle of the others will unleash the powers of Satan? It's really spooky, if you think about it deeply enough. But then thinking deeply about Vienna sausages is always spooky. The world may be just one Vienna sausage away from culinary Armageddon, the powers of putrid pancreas unleashed in my hotel room to spread itself across the world.

I'm just one brand from bring about Viennese Armageddon.

When the final can is inserted into the center it will complete the pattern.

July 20, 2004

Bulwer-Lytton 2004

I must here relate my distress at once again having forgotten to send in my contest entry, and not due to forgetfulness or having to upgrade from Win 98 to Win XP or anything so droll, but simply because I forgot, yet forgot in a way that conjures up the impression of forgetfulness, but not its deeper meaning, though maybe I forgot what that deeper meaning really means while I'm all busy trying to upgrade to the latest version of Windows while wondering if I should switch to Linux.

She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail . . . though the term "love affair" now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism . . . not unlike "sand vein," which is after all an intestine, not a vein . . . and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand . . . and that brought her back to Ramon.

Dave ZobelManhattan Beach, CA

Although I was also impressed with the wit in this one

Her pendulous breasts swung first to the left, then to the right and finally in independent directions, much like semaphore signals, and although he couldn't understand semaphore, Kyle was sure they were saying, "Never ride the Tilt-A-Whirl with your grandma."

Randy HeilLas Vegas, NV

and this one

Her breath came in short, urgent gasps as beads of sweat slowly coalesced and slipped hesitantly over her lightly-tanned skin, leaving glistening trails down a cleavage that was both feminine and primal while her wide eyes betrayed a mind still struggling to accept that her physical ordeal was over and that she had, in fact, caught the bus.

Ben ConnellyCanberra, Australia

Go take a look at the other entries, category winners, runner ups, and dishonorable mentions. I'll guarantee at least a small part of an hour immersed in bad writing at its finest.

Shell Promotes Nigerian

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - Oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell Group named a Nigerian national Tuesday to head the firm's biggest African subsidiary - the first appointment of a Nigerian to the post.

The appointment of Basil Omiyi followed months of pressure by Nigerian labor unions who threatened production shutdowns to get Nigerians in senior positions with the company.

Omiyi, 58, will become managing director of Shell Petroleum Development Co. of Nigeria Ltd. on Sept. 1, the company said. Omiyi is the first Nigerian ever appointed to lead a major oil multinational subsidiary in Nigeria.

Well, we might as well get started on this one. *cracks knuckles* Let me see.

SIR,
I WISH TO COMMENCE A VERY CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS WITH YOU INVOLVING THE TRANSFER OF US$21.4 MILLION (TWENTY ONE MILLION FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND U.S. DOLLARS) CASH FOR YOUR SAFEKEEPING PENDING ON MY ARRIVAL TO YOUR COUNTRY FOR DISBURSEMENT/ INVESTMENT. I AM BASIL OMIYI, FORMER HEAD OF NIGERIAN OIL OPERATIONS FOR THE MUCH ESTEEMED ROYAL DUTCH SHELL COMPANY, WHICH PUMPED HALF OF NIGERIA'S OIL. UPON MY RETIREMENT I FOUND THAT I HAD ACCUMULATED MANY MONIES, BUT CANNOT MOVE THEM FROM NIGERIA WITHOUT THE HELP OF A TRUSTED OVERSEAS ASSOCIATE.

How's that sounding?

Anyway, I've had more than one moonbat screech that we're only in Iraq because of their oil, and that we won't help Africa because there isn't any oil there. Nigeria pumps 2.5 million barrels a day and is the fifth largest supplier to the US. Iraq is pumping about 2 million barrels per day and at its peak, prior to the invasion of Kuwait, it was only pumping 3.5 million barrels per day. It's not about the oil, as even the British Communist Party admits.

July 12, 2004

Australians Need Umbrella Ban

Well, it seems that despite the gun bans, sword bans, knife bans, and just about every other ban under the sun, Australia forgot to ban umbrellas. Unfortunately this legislative lapse has sadly allowed a most heinous teenage umbrella murder.

A year 12 student died after being "speared" in the head with an umbrella by a 14-year-old boy following an argument at an Essendon tram stop, a court was told yesterday.

I think Essendon is part of Melbourne, but my Australian suburban geography isn't the best. I figure if you can even nail the location down to somewhere on their continent from this distance you're doing pretty well.

Chris Williams, 18, who was standing up for his friend, was stabbed with "javelin-like" thrusts during an argument on October 21 last year after the boy, now aged 15, called Mr Williams' female friend a "slut" and "a disgrace", a Children's Court was told.

I would think the thrusts were "umbrella-like", but I really don't want to nitpick. I assume the technique combines some elements of Japanese tessen jutsu, the art of using an iron fan in combat, and English staff technique. Then again you always here about umbrella organizations in the martial arts world, so maybe I've just been misreading the term. Anyway, we now come to a legal defense that's sure to become more popular throughout Australia.